06 December 2023 , 08:46
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Dominic Cummings described the Cabinet Office as "terrifyingly s***" in the build-up to the first Covid lockdown, alarming messages show.
Documents published by the official Covid Inquiry include messages from March 12 2020, where the-then top No10 aide told Boris Johnson that some civil servants wanted to delay ordering people to stay at home as they "haven't done the work and don't work weekends".
The inquiry, which examines the UK’s response to and impact of the pandemic, published a string of messages from Mr Cummings to his boss, in which he said Sir Mark Sedwill - the then head of the Civil Service - "hasn’t a scooby". Mr Cummings, who was exposed by the Mirror for breaking lockdown rules he helped draw up by travelling to County Durham from London, also demanded Mr Johnson begin chairing daily meetings in the Cabinet Room, rather than COBRA and banned devolved Governments, including Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford, from being included.
On the 12 March 2020 at 8am, Mr Cummings texted: “We got big problems coming... [Cabinet Office] is terrifyingly s***t, no plans, totally behind pace, me and Warners and lee/slacky are having to drive and direct."Mark [Sedwill] is out to lunch — hasn’t a scooby what’s going on and his own officials know he doesn’t... We must announce TODAY — not next week — ‘if feel ill with cold/flu stay home’.
Some of the WhatsApp messages exchanged by Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings“Some [Cabinet Office] want delay cos haven’t done the work and don’t weekends... We must force the pace today. We are looking at 100-500 thousand deaths between optimistic / pessimistic scenarios.” Three hours later, he told the PM he needed to “chair daily meetings in the Cabinet room — not COBRA — on this from tomorrow. I’m going to tell the system this”.
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Mr Cummings, who Mr Johnson refused to sack but later dramatically fell out with, added that meetings were not to have the devolved authorities - Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - on the “f***ing phone all the time”. Mr Johnson’s witness statement to the inquiry said he often left Michael Gove to chair the four-nation COBRA meetings, partly because he did not want to provoke the SNP as a “target of nationalist ire”.
It said: “I am afraid I was conscious that I tended to be a particular target of nationalist ire. Rather than provoking the SNP, I wanted to mollify and gain consent. I believed Michael would do a good job.” The second phase of the Covid Inquiry began last week, though Mr Johnson and Rishi Sunak ’s appearances before the probe won’t take place until November. It was reported the pair’s appearances were pushed back in order to avoid disrupting party conference season. Mr Cummings resigned on 13 November 2020 and has since been a strident critic of the Government's pandemic response and his former boss, who resigned himself as PM last year after a Tory revolt and then as an MP in June over his Partygate lies.