Matt Hancock isn’t out of the woods just yet

Matt Hancock enjoyed an early boost in his evidence session to the select committees investigating the lessons learned from the government’s handling of the pandemic, when one of the committee chairs Greg Clark confirmed that Dominic Cummings had not submitted written evidence for the allegations he had made in his own session.

Those allegations included that Hancock had lied to the Prime Minister about testing of patients being discharged into care homes; that he had been told by the chief scientific adviser that not everyone who needed treatment received it; that the Cabinet Secretary had ‘lost confidence’ in the minister’s honesty; and that he had interfered in the expansion of testing capacity. Clark also said Cummings had provided no explanation for this failure to meet the deadline set by the committees.

Hancock referred to this failure a number of times, saying with some evident satisfaction that ‘much of the evidence has not been put forward for that testimony and I find that telling.’