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

Cummings tells inquiry there were “a lot of the wrong people in the wrong job” in the Cabinet Office as he described a culture of “constantly classifying everything to hide mistakes”.

“The Cabinet Office over a long period of time has accumulated more and more power, formal and informal,” he said.

“It’s become incredibly bloated. It’s acquired huge numbers of people, huge numbers of teams. And particularly on the whole, the sort of deep state, national security side, crisis management, has become in all sorts of ways extremely opaque and effectively completely invisible to any political figure, including the prime minister.

“So it was extremely difficult to know in Number 10 who exactly in the Cabinet Office was doing what, whose responsibility it was, who were we supposed to talk to to get action and that was critical, particularly in the first couple of months (of the pandemic).”

Dominic Cummings sent an email to No10 staff in May 2020 saying Boris Johnson was “wasting far too much time in crap meetings”, Archie Mitchell reports.

“We are not using the PM’s time well.” Mr Johnson’s former chief of staff said in the early months of the pandemic.

In the email, shown to the Covid inquiry, Mr Cummings called for any Covid briefings to be cleared by him or another official, Tom Shinner, among a slew of other changes.

“Without radical changes further disasters are guaranteed,” Mr Cummings added.

Dominic Cummings has said it is “crackers” he was made the chief of staff in No10 under Boris Johnson, Archie Mitchell reports.

Asked at the official Covid inquiry whether this is a view he still holds, Mr Cummings said: “For sure.”

Cummings tells inquiry he was “reflecting a widespread view” when he used expletive-laden descriptions of cabinet ministers.

Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel to the inquiry, said: “We’re going to have to coarsen our language somewhat” as he read out some of the terms used by Mr Cummings in WhatsApp and email messages, including “useless f*******, morons, c****.”

“I apologise,” Mr Cummings said.

Asked by Mr Keith whether he contributed to a lack of effectiveness on the part of ministers, Mr Cummings replied: “No, I think I was reflecting a widespread view amongst competent people at the centre of power at the time about the calibre of a lot of senior people who were dealing with this crisis extremely badly.”

Dominic Cummings has claimed Britain’s top civil servant, the cabinet secretary, is between 10 and 100 times as powerful than any other minister, except the prime minister, Archie Mitchell reports.

The former Downing Street chief of staff said the media “aim to cover up this fact”.

Mr Cummings also said the prime minister’s principal private secretary is also "much more powerful" than anybody in the cabinet apart from the prime minister.

Dominic Cummings has been quizzed over calling colleagues “useless f***pigs, morons and c***s”, with the Covid inquiry’s lead counsel Hugo Keith KC asking if his “revolting” language contributed to a lack of effectiveness of cabinet ministers, Archie Mitchell reports.

“My appalling language is my own,” Mr Cummings said.

But he added that he was “reflecting a widespread view amongst competent people at the centre of power”.

Dominic Cummings was told to “slow down” as he started giving evidence to the inquiry.

Boris Johnson’s former chief of staff is being asked about his role in government during the Covid pandemic.

Lee Cain’s description of Covid being the “wrong crisis” for Boris Johnson was “one for the ages,” The Independent’s chief politics commentator John Rentoul says.

“I was in the inquiry hearing for Caino’s words for the ages: ‘It was the wrong crisis for this PM’s skill set,’” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Boris Johnson was told “hungry children” were not the place to start when considering restraint on public finances in the pandemic, Caine tells the inquiry, as he described the overnment’s “huge blunder” around the Marcus Rashford free school meals campaign.

Lee Cain said there had been a clear lack of diversity in the prime minister’s top team when it came to informing policy and decision-making.

In a written statement to the inquiry, Mr Cain said: “I remember asking in the Cabinet Room of 20 people, how many people had received free school meals. Nobody had – resulting in a policy and political blind spot. This was a huge blunder.

“The PM (to some degree understandably) said we needed to draw a line in the sand on public spending commitments, but this was clearly not the place to draw that line – something the PM was told by his senior team.”