Hancock to be quizzed over care home allegations despite Cummings missing evidence deadline

Health secretary facing hours of questioning on Thursday

Matt Hancock will be quizzed over allegations he lied about care home testing at the start of the pandemic on Thursday, despite the failure of Dominic Cummings to submit evidence against him.

Boris Johnson’s one-time most trusted adviser missed the deadline to give written support for his accusations to the Commons health and science committees.

But Jeremy Hunt, who chairs the Health Committee, said Mr Hancock would face questions about all the allegations made against him.

Earlier this month Mr Cummings told MPs the health secretary had lied repeatedly as the government scrambled to get the coronavirus crisis under control.

In particular, he alleged that Mr Hancock had told senior government figures, including the prime minister, that all patients would be tested before they were released from hospitals back to care homes. They were not.

At the weekend Mr Hancock attacked what he said were “completely wrong” claims he had lied to the prime minister about care home testing.

Asked if he had been honest, he replied: "Yes in private and in public. These allegations (from Mr Cummings) are completely wrong."

Mr Hunt told Times Radio Mr Cummings had missed the deadline to submit written evidence against Mr Hancock.

Asked if his committee had received anything as of this morning, he said: “No… Dominic Cummings made some very serious allegations against [Matt Hancock] in particular, saying that he lied repeatedly. So we will put those allegations to him [Hancock].”

He added: “We haven’t received the written evidence to back those claims up that we were expecting. But we’ll be putting [..] all those allegations to him to give him his rightful chance to respond.”

Mr Hancock is expected to undergo hours of questioning by a joint session of the committees on Thursday.

Mr Cummings gave evidence for seven hours when he appeared before the same MPs earlier this month.

Mr Hunt also suggested that any delay to England’s roadmap to lift lockdown would last only a couple of weeks, because of the vaccination programme.

Mr Hunt said he was "feeling quite optimistic that we are going to see the restrictions lifted" as "being double-jabbed" works against the Delta variant of coronavirus first identified in India.

"So, if freedom day ends up being put back a couple of weeks so we can get more people double-jabbed, I think it will only be a temporary setback," he said.

His comments came hours after a  more gloomy environment secretary George Eustice suggested people take their summer holidays in the UK this year.

He told Sky News he would be holidaying in Cornwall this year, adding: "Our advice has been don’t travel unless it’s absolutely necessary.

"Obviously we had hoped, with these three categories that we had, we had hoped that situation would be improving in other parts of the world, that we’d be able to progressively add other countries to the green list.

"Sadly, that’s not the situation. We do have this new variant of concern first identified in India that is now cropping up in other countries, and we’ve just got to take a very cautious approach."