Dominic Cummings tells MPs handling of his Durham lockdown trip ‘was a complete disaster’ – live

9.02am EDT 09:02

Jeremy Hunt says people find Cummings’ story about going to Barnard Castle to check his eyes implausible.

Cummings says, if he were to invent a story, he would have invented a better one. A few days before that trip he was in bed writing his will because he thought he might die.

Q: But if you were testing your eyesight, wasn’t it odd to take your wife and child in the car?

Cummings says it did not feel crazy at the time. He was just driving down the road to see how it went.

8.59am EDT 08:59

Cummings says the real problem was the the PM would not come up with a policy and stick to it. He was changing his mind every time the Daily Telegraph wrote a leader on the subject. He was “just like a shopping trolley smashing from one side of the aisle to the other”.

8.57am EDT 08:57

Cummings says media ‘massively exaggerated’ his influence in No 10 after 2019 election

Cummings says although he was probably right not to resign in March last year, he was “definitely wrong” not to resign in September.

He says the press may have under-estimated his influence between July and December 2019. But after that they “massively exaggerated” his influence, he says.

If I could have clicked my fingers and done things, there would have been a serious border policy, masks would have been compulsory, Hancock would have been fired, we’d have done dozens and dozens and dozens of things.

He says the problems was that he and Boris Johnson just fundamentally disagreed on Covid. And the PM’s girlfriend, Carrie Symonds, was “desperate to get rid of me”, Cummings says.

Updated at 9.01am EDT

8.52am EDT 08:52

Q: Why did you not reveal your concerns about Covid policy to the media?

Cummings says it was because he wanted to change policy within government.

8.51am EDT 08:51

James Davies (Con) is asking the questions now.

Q: Why did you not apologise last year?

Cummings says there were multiple things going on. He says he thinks his behaviour was “perfectly reasonable”. So that is why he did not want to apologise. He did not see it as a mistake.

But he was only telling part of the story. It was a complete disaster.

He says the security problems recurred. He says twice more he had to move his family out of the house.

He says the story about him returning to Durham again is false.

But he says his family did move out. He discussed that with the police, he says.

Q: Why has it taken you this long to explain this?

Cummings says he does understand people’s anger about this. He says his own uncle died in hospital with Covid around this time.

Q: Why were you targeted so much by the media?

Cummings says he has never complained about the media, or threatened to sue them.

But if you have said as many critical things about the media as he has, then they will criticise you.

He says he also wanted to change the way No 10 deals with the media. He says Downing Street traditionally operated as a “press answering service”. He says the PM was happy with that. But Cummings says he wanted to change that, and diminish the importance of the media.

8.43am EDT 08:43

Cummings says his wife insisted on family returning to London with Cummings

Jeremy Hunt says threats are totally unacceptable. But one thing he did not understand. If he moved his family out of London for security reasons, why did he move them back?

Cummings says he was very ill. He thought he might die. If it was up to him, he would have left his family in Durham. But he was quite ill, and his wife was worried about what might happen if he collapsed alone in the house. He says he was under pressure to return to work because the government was in free fall. His wife insisted on returning to London with him.

8.41am EDT 08:41

Cummings says he did not disclose last year that security threats were major factor in lockdown-busting trip to Durham

Evans asks about Cummings’ trip to Durham, and Barnard Castle.

Cummings says there is information about this not in the public domain.

He says in the autumn of 2019 he had to leave home for a few weeks because he was receiving threats.

And he says there was another incident when his wife was in the house alone, and there were people outside making threats.

He says that at that point he discussed this with officials in government, and he agreed to move his family out of London.

After it emerged that he had left London, he had to hold the press conference.

He says he made a terrible mistake. He decided it was best not to discuss the security issues affecting his decision to leave London because he thought that would just make the situation worse.

He says that this was a mistake.

8.34am EDT 08:34

This is from Prof Christina Pagel, head of the clinical operational research unit at University College London and a member of Independent Sage, an expert group that has been making Covid recommendations as an alternative to the official Sage.

8.32am EDT 08:32

Cummings describes Johnson as someone who ‘changes his mind 10 times a day’

Luke Evans (Con) is asking the questions now.

Q: How would you rate government communications in this?

Cummings says some of the best people in the world were working on communications. The problems were “bad policy, bad decisions, bad planning, bad operational capability”. He goes on:

It doesn’t matter if you’ve got great people doing communications. If the prime minister changes his mind 10 times a day, and then calls up the media and contradicts his own policy, day after day after day, you’re going to have communications disasters.

As an example, he says Boris Johnson was warned by his head of communications, Lee Cain, not to pick a fight with Marcus Rashford over school meals. But Johnson ignored that advice, and had to back down twice.

Updated at 8.34am EDT

8.28am EDT 08:28

Q: It has been reported that the PM said he was not worried about the pandemic because it was only killing 80-year-olds.

Cummings says it is clear there was no proper plan for care homes. It was catastrophic.

Like all of these things, it was not deliberate. It was a function of the fact that the system was just completely overwhelmed.

On the point about 80-year-olds (see 12.12pm), he says this was an issue in September.

The hearing will get on to September later.