Covid inquiry live: Priti Patel admits policing of Sarah Everard vigil was ‘totally inappropriate’
Ex-home secretary says police generally struck right balance between protest and Covid restrictions
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Your support makes all the difference.Dame Priti Patel has admitted to the Covid inquiry that the policing of a vigil for murdered marketing executive Sarah Everard was “totally inappropriate”.
The former home secretary said she was “dismayed” by the policing of the vigil in early 2021. The Metropolitan Police have since apologised and paid damages to two of those who were arrested.
However, Dame Priti said she felt the police generally struck the right balance between enforcing coronavirus restrictions and upholding people’s right to protest – despite such matters feeling “uncomfortable” at the time.
Earlier today, former top police chief Martin Hewitt criticised localised Covid rules, the speed at which they changed, and the tier system of different regulations for different areas of the country.
He told the inquiry that localised tiers made it “incredibly difficult for even a perfectly law-abiding and committed citizen to understand precisely what that meant for them in their own personal circumstances”, while having different regulations “on opposite sides of the same road” made policing more difficult.
Jun Pang, the policy and campaigns officer at Liberty, is also giving evidence to the inquiry.
Cummings ‘rolled dice’ and backed Johnson as PM despite believing him ‘unfit'
Dominic Cummings said he decided to “roll the dice” and back Boris Johnson to be prime minister even though he believed he was “unfit” for power.
Asked if he was sorry, Mr Cummings said “no”, adding: “Politics is about choices.
“And the choice that we had in summer 2019 was do we allow the whole situation, this once-a-century constitutional crisis to continue, meltdown and possibly see Jeremy Corbyn as PM and a second referendum on Brexit – which we thought would be catastrophic for the country and for democracy, for faith in democracy – or to roll the dice on Boris and to try and control him and build a team around him that could control him.
“We didn’t take that choice lightly. We considered in summer 19 an alternative of staying out of it.
“But we thought the combination of second referendum and Corbyn was so bad that we should roll the dice.”
Johnson raged Cummings was ‘total and utter liar’ after Barnard Castle trip
Boris Johnson raged that Dominic Cummings was a “total and utter liar” after his lockdown trip to Barnard Castle became public.
In messages shared with the Covid inquiry, dated July 19 2021, Mr Johnson said: “Cummings a total and utter liar. He never told me he had gone to Durham during lockdown.
“I only discovered when the stories started to come out about Barnard castle etc. I believed Mary Wakefield when she wrote a piece in spec giving impression they had been in London the whole time.
“He later claimed that he had told me but that my brain was so fogged by Covid that I didn’t register.
“It’s not true, I would have noted it.
“He never told me. I then tried my very best to defend him.”
Boris said it was ‘cr**’ that wife Carrie was leading lockdown policy
Boris Johnson called suggestions his wife Carrie was leading lockdown policy “cr**”, the Covid inquiry has heard.
In a final WhatsApp to Mr Cummings on November 15, 2020, Mr Johnson hit out at suggestions that his now wife Carrie was responsible for briefing against his former senior aide, who had left No 10 two days earlier.
The message from Mr Johnson said: “She hasn’t briefed anyone and my instructions to all were to shut the f*** up. How is any of us supposed to know where these briefings come from? Look at the claims made on behalf of allies of Lee (Cain) and Dom, that I’m out in six months, that I can’t take decisions, that Carrie is secretly forging lockdown policy, and about a billion equally demented claims.
“Are you responsible for all that crap? No. Then look at it from my point of view. This is a totally disgusting orgy of narcissism by a government that should be solving a national crisis.
“We must end this. That’s why I wanted to talk and see what we can jointly do to sterilise the whole thing. But if you really refuse, then that’s up to you.”
Asked if he agreed there was an “orgy of narcissism” in the government, Mr Cummings told the Covid inquiry: “Certainly there was.”
Cummings on Johnson’s relationship with media: ‘Extremely damaging’
Dominic Cummings was asked by Hugo Keith about the relationship between Boris Johnson and the media.
Mr Cummings said: “There was a general feeling in Number 10 that the way in which the Prime Minister responded constantly to the media was extremely bad and extremely damaging to the Covid response.
“There were specific concerns about his relationship with the Barclays in the Telegraph.
“And there were specific concerns and also suspicions of possible corruption in terms of his relationship with Osborne, and funnelling money to the Evening Standard.”
He also said that Boris Johnson had spoken to and met with Lord Lebedev in March 2020.
Counsel puts to Cummings that he ‘denigrated women'
Counsel to the Inquiry Hugo Keith KC put to Dominic Cummings that he “denigrated women” and “denigrated Helen McNamara” by sending her a misogynistic message.
Mr Cummings responded: “No that’s not correct. I was not misogynistic.
“I was much ruder about men than I was about Helen.
“I agree that my language is deplorable, but as you can see for yourself I deployed the same or worse language (for) the prime minister, secretary of state or other people.
“If you want to look at how we actually ran things, unlike Whitehall, I had two young women as my deputies, I hired young women into the data science team, in the Vote Leave campaign I actually put a woman in her 30s in charge of it much to the rage of a lot of MPs.
“So if you look at the reality of how I actually ran teams, and how they got on with the private secretaries in Number 10, you will see the truth of the matter.”
Cummings apologises for foul-mouthed message about MacNamara
Dominic Cummings apologised for his foul-mouthed WhatsApp message about former deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara.
He said: “I apologise for my language towards Helen but a thousand times worse than my language was the underlying insanity of the situation in Number 10.”
Mr Cummings criticised Boris Johnson’s “botched” attempt to change senior civil servants in No 10 and the Cabinet Office.
He said: “The prime minister had – first of all – tried to sack the cabinet secretary and then botched it, and he was still there. Then he had said to everyone that he wanted Helen to be removed as well and that he had lost confidence in Helen.”
That meant “we were in this absolutely nightmare situation where the PM had made clear that he didn’t have confidence in either of the two senior officials, had said to people that he was going to remove them, then he didn’t remove them for week after week”.
Mr Cummings said: “Now, my language about Helen – the language is absolutely appalling and actually I got on well with Helen at a personal level – but a thousand times worse than my bad language is the underlying issue at stake that we had a Cabinet Office system that had completely melted and the prime minister had half begun the process of changing the senior management and then stopped.”
Yousaf’s informal messages will be handed to inquiry, says Robison
Informal messages sent and received by First Minister Humza Yousaf during the Covid-19 pandemic, when he served as justice secretary and health secretary, will be handed over to the UK inquiry unredacted, Deputy First Minister Shona Robison has said.
“As the First Minister recently stated, should either Covid inquiry want more information, then we expect every Minister, past and present, every government official and clinical adviser to comply,” she said.
“I can confirm that the First Minister will, when submitting his final statement for Module 2A in the coming days, hand over WhatsApp messages, unredacted to the inquiry.”
Cummings calls top civil servant ‘f***** up frosty’ in messages shown at inquiry
In another message, shown at the inquiry, Dominic Cummings said of former top civil servant Helen MacNamara: “We gotta get Helen out of CabOff. She’s f***** up frosty. She’s f***** up me and case. She’s trying to get spads fired and cause trouble on multiple fronts.
“Can we get her in on Monday for chat re her moving to CLG or dft. I get the distinct impression MS isn’t acting swiftly and she is trying to hang on waiting to get hooks into new CabSec and stay in there… we need her out ASAP. Building millions of lovely houses.”
Watch: Covid compared to chickenpox
Cummings calls MacNamara a ‘c***’ in series of disparaging messages
Dominic Cummings has been shown a series of messages in which he called former top civil servant Helen MacNamara a “c***” and said he would “handcuff her and escort her” from Downing Street.
The Covid-19 inquiry was shown the disparaging messages Mr Cummings sent to Boris Johnson’s former comms chief Lee Cain about the then deputy cabinet secretary in 2020, in which he said he didn’t care “how it’s done” but “that woman must be out of our hair”.
To audible gasps in the press annex of the Covid inquiry, lead counsel Hugo Keith KC read out a message in which Mr Cummings said: “If I have to come back to Helen’s bullshit with PET - designed to waste huge amounts of my time so I can’t spend it on other stuff - I will personally handcuff her and escort her from the building.
“I don’t care how it’s done but that woman must be out of our hair - we cannot keep dealing with this horrific meltdown of the British state while dodging stilettos from that c***.”
Cummings denied he was misogynistic.
The inquiry also heard that Ms MacNamara and a fellow civil servant had drawn up a report complaining of “toxic cultural problems in No 10, people talking over junior women, a sexist macho culture”.
The inquiry also heard that Cummings had described the Cab Office, where ms MacNamara worked, as “terrifyingly shit”.
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