An expert has questioned Dominic Cummings’ reliability as a witness after his blistering attack on the UK government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cummings, the former chief aide to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, told a parliamentary committee the government had failed the British people.
He said Johnson viewed COVID-19 as “just a scare story” and described scenes of chaos in the government with ministers going on holiday as the pandemic took hold. Cummings alleged health minister Matt Hancock lied to the public on multiple occasions and that Johnson was more concerned about saving the economy than people’s lives.
But Jill Rutter, a senior research fellow at UK in a Changing Europe, said despite the salacious details Cummings is not the most reliable witness. She made a reference to his explanations for a trip from London to north-east England when he was a government employee and the rest of the country was under lockdown.
“We also have to recognise because of the events of last year, Dominic Cummings is not the world’s most credible witness in the eyes of a lot of people.
“We have that bizarre press conference about his trip to the north-east in the early stages [of the pandemic],” said Rutter. “He has now given a quite different version of why he did that and said it was for security reasons. And that story still doesn’t really stack up terribly well.”
