Government secrecy contributed to the Covid catastrophe, says Dominic Cummings

Dominic Cummings has warned that the Government needs to allow “public scrutiny” of its vaccine strategy as he said “secrecy contributed greatly to the catastrophe” of the early months of the pandemic.

The former Number 10 adviser, who is set to give evidence to a Parliamentary inquiry next week, launched another public attack on the Government on Tuesday.

In a long series of messages on Twitter, he said Covid plans were “part disaster, part non existent”, criticised lockdowns which lacked “serious enforcement” and warned that the success of the vaccine taskforce risked being undermined by it being turned into a conventional Whitehall operation.

Mr Cummings also said he could sell or disclose what he claimed to be the “the only copy of a crucial historical document from Covid decision-making”.

He said he would donate the proceeds from any such sale to the families of Covid victims, before later deleting the post and then confirming that he would give the documents to a Parliamentary committee inquiry he is due to appear before next week.

However, The Telegraph understands that as of Tuesday night he had not done so.

Responding to Mr Cummings’s threat on Tuesday, the Prime Minister’s spokesman suggested there would be repercussions if the document was made public.

He told reporters: “I’m not going to speculate on what information individuals may have or how they might choose to make that public. Obviously there are clear rules that are abided by in these situations.”

It comes weeks after Downing Street briefed that Mr Cummings was suspected of leaking a series of damaging stories to newspapers about the Prime Minister. In response, Mr Cummings published a blog raising further damaging allegations.

While it remains unclear what the security classification of Mr Cummings’ document is, senior government sources warned on Tuesday night that there were strict rules about disclosing official information.

Under the Official Secrets Act, serving or former officials who disclose secret information can face prosecution, while less serious breaches of confidentiality could still be considered a breach of contract.

“There are obviously rules when you leave government,” one Whitehall insider told The Telegraph, while another said: “It could be any one of a thousand documents.

“There’s a real chance this document isn’t secret. It’s probably sensitive. It is almost certainly a breach of contract [if it were disclosed].”

In the wide-ranging broadside against the Government, Mr Cummings said: “One of the most fundamental and unarguable lessons of Feb-March is that secrecy contributed greatly to the catastrophe. Openness to scrutiny would have exposed Government errors weeks earlier than happened.”

The 49-year-old, who has seen classified parts of the Government’s response, also disputed claims that secrecy over vaccine supplies was necessary, adding that 99 per cent of the plans could be made public as they were “totally irrelevant” to national security.

With Whitehall departments now considering local lockdowns to deal with the Indian variant, which is surging in parts of the country, Mr Cummings branded the UK’s border policy a “joke” and claimed that “pseudo lockdowns” without “serious enforcement are hopeless”.

He went on to challenge ministers to subject their plans for coping with mutant strains to “public scrutiny”, suggesting it would reveal any potential “screw ups” sooner.

And in a swipe at the Whitehall, he claimed that the Vaccine Taskforce, which led the UK’s world-leading inoculation programme, risked being turned back into a “normal entity” by the “silent entropy of Whitehall”.

He is believed to have been referring to the fact the taskforce, which was led by Kate Bingham, a venture capitalist, has now shifted back from the Department for Business to the Department for Health, which Mr Cummings repeatedly criticised.

While Clive Dix, the head of a pioneering drug discovery company, is now interim chairman, there are fears among some in Whitehall that a permanent replacement for Ms Bingham will be a conventional Whitehall bureaucrat.

However, a government source said on Tuesday night: “All of the things that have made the vaccine taskforce a success we are committed to retaining. It’s still got a huge job in terms of booster programmes and vaccines going forward.”

Separately, the Prime Minister’s spokesman dismissed Mr Cummings’s criticism of the Government’s border policy, stating: “I would reject that. We have some of the strongest border measures in the world.”