Dominic Cummings tweeted an image of a whiteboard on which the government’s supposed “plan B” for the first wave of coronavirus was sketched out, ahead of his evidence session to a joint select committee of MPs.
The “first sketch” was drawn up in Boris Johnson’s study on the evening of 13 March and shown to the prime minister the following day, the former No 10 aide said in the post on Wednesday morning.
Plan A “breaks” the NHS and results in a daily death toll of more than 4,000, Mr Cummings claimed, while plan B was for “lockdown, suppress, crash programs” – the accelerated drive to boost tests, treatments and develop vaccines in order to escape both the first and second waves. He promised to reveal further “details later”.
Amid the graphs and text, though, was a single sentence sure to shock MPs questioning Mr Cummings today which reads: “Who do we not save?”
It comes after Mr Johnson’s former adviser claimed last week the government’s original plan was for limited intervention with the hope of achieving herd immunity, but that was abandoned when it became clear the scale of the death toll that would result.
In an ongoing stream of tweets, which he began publishing intermittently from 17 May, Mr Cummings claimed on Saturday: “The media have been generally abysmal on Covid, but even I’ve been surprised by one thing: how many hacks have parroted Hancock’s line that ‘herd immunity wasn’t the plan’ when ‘herd immunity by September’ was literally the official plan in all docs/graphs/meetings until it was ditched.”
But appearing on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show the following day, home secretary Priti Patel said the government ‘s decision to delay lockdown was “absolutely not” because it wanted to let the virus rip through the population.
“Our strategy was always about protecting public health, saving lives and protecting the NHS,” she told Andrew Marr. “Absolutely all colleagues involved in those meetings and discussions, working with the chief scientist and the chief medical officers, absolutely recognised that from the very difficult discussions that we had.”
She continued: “At the time of a crisis when government is making very, very tough decisions, difficult decisions, we put public life and protecting the public at the forefront of all those decisions.”
Speaking before MPs this morning, Mr Cummings said he “failed to understand” why No 10 “continued to deny” herd immunity was the government’s original plans.
Jeremy Hunt, chair of the Commons’ health committee and part of the team questioning Mr Cummings, further scrutinised the image of the whiteboard.
Asked if it represented “the first time” he had told Mr Johnson that official consensus from scientists not to lockdown was wrong, Mr Cummings replied: “No, it wasn’t the first time.”
Mr Cummings went on to claim he told the prime minister he believed England should officially shut down “on the morning of the 12th [of March]” – 11 days before it actually happened.
The questioning continues and can be watched live on Independent TV.
