Matt Hancock in the hot seat: his key lines of defence

Matt Hancock has faced a four-hour grilling from MPs on his handling of the coronavirus crisis after former No. 10 aide Dominic Cummings claimed he should have been “fired for at least 15, 20 things” during the pandemic.

The political career and conduct of the health secretary were “under the microscope” as he responded to “a host of damning accusations” from Cummings in front of the joint health and science select committee, reports the i newspaper.

The allegations

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Cummings claimed the health secretary should have been “fired for at least 15, 20 things, including lying to everybody on multiple occasions in meeting after meeting in the cabinet room and publicly”.

Speaking in front of the same committee two weeks ago, Cummings said Hancock was among the senior people who performed “disastrously below the standards which the country has a right to expect”.

Johnson’s former right-hand man accused the minister of displaying “criminal, disgraceful behaviour that caused serious harm” by interfering with the building of the test and trace system to maximise the chances of reaching his “stupid target” of 100,000 coronavirus tests a day by the end of April 2020.

He also claimed Hancock said in March that hospital patients would be tested before being sent home to care homes but that had not happened. The government rhetoric that there was a “shield” around care homes was “complete nonsense” as the opposite had happened, Cummings said. Crucially, however, Cummings is yet to provide evidence for his claims.

Figures released by NHS England last year showed that 25,060 patients were moved from hospitals to care homes between 17 March and 16 April before routine testing was introduced, The Independent reports. By January 2021, the Office for National Statistics said more than 30,000 care home residents in England and Wales had died with coronavirus recorded on their death certificates.

The defence

Asked today why Cummings might have been so “withering” about him, Hancock said: “I have no idea.” However, he revealed that he was aware Cummings wanted the PM to sack him due to reports in newspapers.

The health secretary insisted he had been driven by an approach of “honesty and integrity”, and “struck back” at Cummings, saying the government “has operated better over the past six months” since the maverick aide left Downing Street, reports The Telegraph.

On care homes, Hancock said: “Each and every death in a care home weighs heavily and always will”, but he admitted that protecting them had been “very hard”. He acknowledged that he had said the government had “tried to throw a protective ring around our care homes”, but said: “I think the most important words in the sentence are ‘we tried to’.”

“We put in funding,” he said. “We made sure PPE was as available as possible. We set guidance for care homes. Then later when we had the testing capacity - in July - we brought in weekly testing for staff.”

When questioned about his 100,000-tests-a-day target, Hancock admitted it was a “radical increase” but that the number “mattered because it galvanised the systems”. “Sometimes you have to put yourself in jeopardy and on the line,” he said, but added: “Everybody was focused on the goal and we hit it.”

The health secretary claimed that he had done everything he could to save lives. “We worked every day from the moment we woke up to the moment we fell into our beds,” he told the committee. “I know that I can face the mirror each morning.”