Covid inquiry live: Priti Patel admits policing of Sarah Everard vigil was ‘totally inappropriate’

Scottish Deputy First Minister Shona Robison has said she is not able to provide details on what has or has not been provided to the Covid inquiries.

Making a statement in Holyrood, Ms Robison said it was for the inquiries to decide what should be published, in the wake of a row over the potential deletion of WhatsApp messages – including reports that Nicola Sturgeon messages may not have been retained.

“It is important to note that both inquiries have made all their requests to witnesses in confidence, and those requests are not public,” she said.

“All those receiving requests, including Scottish Government, have been told by the inquiries not to share their content. It is entirely up to – and wholly a matter for – the independent inquiry chairs to determine, where appropriate, whether to publish the material they receive.

“The Scottish Government is obliged to comply with this requirement and as such I will not, and cannot, provide precise details on any of the requests that the Scottish Government has received to date, including specific information on what has been asked of individuals who have received requests from the inquiries.

“Nor can I discuss in detail what material individuals have or have not provided.”

Boris Johnson argued that lockdown would be “killing the patient to tackle the tumour” on March 19 2020, Dominic Cummings said as he accused him of dithering over the decision.

Mr Johnson’s former chief adviser was asked about a diary note by an aide, attributed to the then-prime minister, stating: “We’re killing the patient to tackle the tumour. Large ppl (taken to mean large numbers of people) who will die, why are we destroying economy for people who will die anyway soon.”

Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, asked Mr Cummings who made that comment.

“I think it was the PM,” Mr Cummings replied, saying it was a reflection of the debate going on in Downing Street and that the Treasury being “baffled” that “why are we not sticking to” the plan.

Asked whether there was a real problem in getting Mr Johnson to agree to a course of action and to stick to it, Mr Cummings agreed that that “is the nub of it”.

He said: “By the 19th it was totally obvious that there was going to be a lockdown. And my fear then was that if the PM suddenly trolleyed back, then all it would do was cause more needless confusion.”

Boris Johnson getting rid of Britain’s top civil servant Sir Mark Sedwill was “one of the most disastrous moments of 2020”, Dominic Cummings has claimed.

Mr Cummings said: “It was a total disaster. But it was also, from a personal level, it was very unfair on Mark.”

He acknowledged that he “played his part” in the PM’s loss of confidence in Sir Mark.

In a message sent to Boris Johnson by Dominic Cummings in May 2020, the top adviser told the Prime Minister that Health Secretary Matt Hancock had “killed people”.

In a WhatsApp message shared with the inquiry, he said: “You need to think through timing of binning Hancock. There’s no way the guy can stay. He’s lied his way through this and killed people and dozens and dozens of people have seen it.

“He will have to go the question is when and who replaces.”

Dominic Cummings confirmed it was Boris Johnson who said in a meeting during the pandemic: "Why are we destroying the economy for people who will die anyway soon?"

On Monday, the inquiry heard that Mr Johnson had, according to a note read from the diary of a former private secretary, asked why the economy was being destroyed “for people who will die anyway soon”, in the days before the country went into lockdown.

The diary note from Imran Shafi, which he attributed to Mr Johnson, stated: “We’re killing the patient to tackle the tumour. Large ppl (taken to mean large numbers of people) who will die, why are we destroying economy for people who will die anyway soon.”

Asked on Tuesday who made the comment, Mr Cummings said: "I think it was the PM."

Dominic Cummings warned Boris Johnson of the NHS imploding “like a zombie apocalypse film”, the UK Covid-19 Inquiry heard.

Calling for daily meetings on the crisis in the Cabinet room, Mr Johnson’s former chief adviser said in a WhatsApp to the then-prime minister on March 12 2020: “The overwhelming danger here is being late and the NHS implodes like zombie apocalypse film – not being a week early.”

Asked about the message, Mr Cummings told the inquiry new NHS data he had seen revealed “that the whole crisis was coming much, much, much faster than we had been told”.

The Covid inquiry revealed a text from Dominic Cummings to Lee Cain which said then cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill was “babbling about chickenpox”., Archie Mitchell reports.

“God fucking help us,” Mr Cummings added..

The former No10 chief of staff was asked what was being said about chickenpox by the top civil servant.

He said there was a meeting in the PM’s study on the day of the message, sent on March 12, 2020. “The cabinet secretary said to the PM, ‘PM, you should go on TV and you should explain that this is like the old days with chickenpox, and people are going to have chickenpox parties and the sooner a lot of people get this and get it over with the

better, sort of thing.’

“This had been mentioned before, this analogy, and I said ‘Mark you should stop using this analogy of chickenpox parties’.”

Mr Cummings said it was “terrifying” that such a senior civil servant was being briefed that Covid was similar to chickenpox.

Matt Hancock “sowed chaos” by continuing to insist in March 2020 that people without symptoms of a dry cough and a temperature were unlikely to be suffering from coronavirus, Dominic Cummings has said.

Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser was asked by Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, whether it was understood in Downing Street, despite the then-health secretary’s claims, that there was in fact asymptomatic transmission.

Mr Cummings replied: “It was and Mr Hancock had made this point in multiple ways and sowed chaos by saying this.

“He was repeatedly told by Patrick Vallance the what he was saying was wrong. But he kept saying it.

“So this false meme lodged itself in crucial people’s minds. I don’t understand, never understood why Hancock said this. But Patrick Vallance made extremely clear to me and to others in No 10 that what Hancock was saying was factually wrong.”

Dominic Cummings said conversations such as storing “massive numbers of bodies” in ice rinks “exploded” in the week beginning March 9 2020, the UK Covid-19 Inquiry heard.

Answering a question on whether he was persuaded that the herd immunity approach was the wrong way to go, Mr Cummings said: “In the week beginning the ninth… I had growing doubts on an hourly basis.

“By the 11th my view was, I’ve got an appalling feeling that I’m in one of those historic catastrophes, like July 1914. I’ve got a lot of smart people coming to me saying a) the fundamentally the strategy is wrong, misconceived, but also at a practical level.

“At this point remember I was sitting in an office and suddenly overhearing people having phone calls about whether local authorities could book out ice rinks and get trucks to carry massive numbers of bodies and store them in ice rinks.

“These conversations suddenly exploded in the week of the ninth.

“So on the one hand a fundamental argument is the strategy misconceived or not, but we also had this sort of growing cascade of nightmare conversations going on around us where we realised that the system was just completely out of control in terms of coping with its original plan A.”