Hugo Keith KC, the inquiry's lawyer, moves on to the considerations around at-risk and vulnerable groups when the decision was being taken on whether to implement a lockdown.

By "vulnerable", he clarifies: people who were vulnerable in terms of socio-economic deprivation, victims of domestic abuse, people vulnerable to the impact of a lockdown, and members of minority ethnic groups.

Keith asks to what degree these people were being considered by Downing Street.

Cummings argues this was "entirely appallingly neglected by the entire planning system" and that there were no plans, or effort to make plans, for these people.

They realised mid-March that there was "essentially no shielding plan at all" and that, he says, the Cabinet Office was trying to "block" the creation of a shielding plan.

Cummings is now being questioned about Science Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) and how it operated and communicated with the government.

The inquiry's lawyer Hugo Keith asks why no one asked Sage for more clarity on their recommendations.

"With respect, it wasn't my job to try and commandeer Sage and give them orders", Cummings says.

Keith digs in, suggesting that actually Cummings was not just a political adviser - that he was in a position to exercise a significant degree of control in No 10.

The problem was not with Sage in isolation, says Cummings, but with the "interface" between Sage, the Department of Health and the Cabinet Office.

Cummings is asked when he or No 10 suggested structural changes to the Department for Health to ensure it performed better.

He says in April the prime minister had "nearly died" after catching Covid, "so discussing it was very tricky".

However, he says the possibility of splitting up the department was discussed, including creating various taskforces.

He says the creating of taskforces, including for vaccines, was a reflection that the department was "performing poorly" and was "clearly overwhelmed".

The inquiry’s lawyer asks Cummings why, when it became apparent the Department for Health was struggling, changes were not made.

Cummings says the Cabinet Office was responsible for dealing with a problem like that, but it itself was overwhelmed by the crisis and so it was “slow in getting to grips with the problem of the Department for Health”.

He also says the Cabinet Secretary had said then Health Secretary Matt Hancock was not clear in asking for the help his department needed, which contributed to the problem.

Cummings says there were "huge changes" in the Cabinet Office, adding that core teams that were put in charge of Covid were repeatedly created and dissolved.

"We were repeatedly told by No 10 that they had burnt out from stress and had gone," he says.

By September, he adds, things were a little more stable, even if still "dysfunctional" in many ways.

Image source, Covid Inquiry

The inquiry's lawyer says a number of witnesses described a “dysfunctionality” and lack of a proper working relationship between the Cabinet Office, No 10 and other government departments.

There was a lack of clarity about who was leading, Hugo Keith KC says: “Nobody knew, in essence, who was in charge. Who do you go to in order to get decisions out of the government machine?”

Cummings says this was a general description of 2019 and 2020. Things improved from summer when the Covid taskforce was created, but until then things were “extremely chaotic”, he says.

Asked if he had success in reorganising the structures in No 10, he replies: "I would say generally failure with pockets of success.”

Image source, Covid inquiry

Cummings says No 10 "is not configured to be the nerve centre of a national crisis like Covid", both because of its physical layout and the personnel working there.

Instead, he says "real power" is almost entirely in the Cabinet Office - that's the government department responsible for supporting the prime minister and ensuring the smooth-running of government.

It is put to Cummings that he brought in friends and colleagues to work in No 10 and the inquiry's lawyer asks why this was necessary.

Cummings defends the individuals he put forward for roles, arguing their backgrounds made them suitable.

The inquiry lawyer puts to Cummings that he was not happy about devolved administrations - Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - attending meetings. Cummings disagrees.

The lawyer then asks why Cummings wanted cabinet minister Michael Gove to attend meetings with the devolved administrations instead of the PM.

Cummings says Gove had the best experience and would do a much better job, adding that it was preferable to have the PM focused on the impending catastrophe.

The lawyer questions whether the devolved administrations had an entitlement to confer with the PM in the face of the unprecedent crisis. Cummings says they did, but it was beneficial to confer with Gove and other officials.

Image source, UK Covid Inquiry

Cummings says officials were unable to show Boris Johnson “crucial data” in the Cobra meeting room because of practical issues.

The inquiry is shown an email from Cummings to a senior official in the Cabinet Office, where he says he and Johnson feel Cobra meetings are “hopeless decision-making entities and actively cause trouble for comms”.

It is put to Cummings by the inquiry's lawyer that he "ran down" the Cobra system because the devolved administrations - that is Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - took part, and he believed there was an unacceptable risk of leaks.

Cummings says “that’s overstating things”, as he claims he did not have the authority to "run it down".

He says Cobra - the government committee which coordinates responses to crises - did continue, and those who ran it did "an extremely professional job".

But he says it was a structural problem as Cobra didn't scale up to the crisis.

Cummings adds that people leaking information from Cobra meetings to the media "undermined public confidence".

The inquiry's lawyer asks Cummings why, in his view, Cobra - the government's emergency response committee made up of ministers, civil servants and others - was not effective in handling Covid.

Cummings says there were practical issues and ones of scale: "This crisis was on the scale of a war."

He says Cobra was usually used to dealing with "relatively small things like floods, like a terrorist attack with five people getting killed".

The afternoon session of the Covid inquiry has resumed, with Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings giving evidence.

He's being questioned by the inquiry's lawyer Hugo Keith KC.

We'll be bringing you the key lines from the hearing and you can also watch it live at the top of this page.

A word of warning, there may be some strong language in the feed, but we're choosing to show this as we think there's a clear public interest in streaming the inquiry's proceedings in full.

Image source, EPA

The Covid inquiry has been hearing from two of former PM Boris Johnson's top aides about how the government handled the pandemic.

Here's some of the evidence we've heard so far:

• Dominic Cummings said the Cabinet Office was a "dumpster fire" and "bomb site" when he took up his role as chief adviser in 2019
• Text messages from Cummings, who was sacked in late 2020, were shown to the inquiry, many of which contained what he called "appalling language" about ministers. However, he said his judgement of a lot of senior people was "widespread"
• Earlier, we heard from Johnson's former director of communications Lee Cain, who said the pandemic was the "wrong crisis" for the PM's "skill set", describing indecision and delay in No 10
• The inquiry also heard Johnson was "obsessed with older people accepting their fate and letting the young get on with life", according to notebook entries from then chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance in 2020
• Johnson's spokesman has so far declined to comment on the evidence given at these hearings, but says he's "co-operating fully" with the inquiry
• Cummings is due to resume giving evidence from 13:45. There may be some strong language in our live feed at the top of the page, which the BBC is broadcasting on public interest grounds

The evidence session has paused for lunch, it'll be back around 13:45.

Cummings goes on to describe the Cabinet Office - the department that supports the work of the prime minister and the smooth running of government - as a "bomb site" and a "dumpster fire" when he took up his role as adviser to Boris Johnson in 2019.

He alleged Boris Johnson was described as an indecisive "trolley" by "pretty much everyone".

Cummings agreed when the inquiry's lawyer asked whether the term was used by officials to describe the then-prime minister's propensity to change direction.

The inquiry's lawyer turns to an email Cummings sent on 3 May 2020, in which he says government meetings are a waste of the prime minister's time.

In the email, he says that from then on no papers should go to Boris Johnson on anything related to Covid unless they were cleared by civil servant Tom Shinner or Cummings himself.

Asked if it was wise to "concentrate this degree of control" in himself and Shinner, Cummings says he was not imposing power on anyone.

He says that the then cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill - the most senior civil servant - agreed it was a good idea.

We mentioned earlier that some very strong language is being broadcast on the live feed from the inquiry as messages are read out in evidence.

This is because the lead counsel to the inquiry has decided that this evidence is pertinent to its aim of examining the UK’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and trying to learn lessons for the future.

The inquiry is chaired by Baroness Heather Hallett, a former Court of Appeal judge.

While the BBC would not normally broadcast such strong language, we believe there is a clear public interest in reporting the inquiry's proceedings in full.

The inquiry's lawyer puts it to Cummings that his views of senior ministers at the time of the pandemic was that the public deserved better.

Cummings says that is largely true, but there were also people he thought were "exceptional". The issue, he says, was they were enmeshed into a system that he thought didn't work.

Asked by the inquiry's lawyer whether any government structure worked at the time, he says there was "overall widespread failure, but pockets of excellent people and pockets of excellent teams doing excellent work in a dysfunctional system".

The inquiry's lawyer asks Cummings on his views of the Cabinet Office - a government department that supports the work of the prime minister and tries to smooth the running of government.

Cummings says over time, the Cabinet Office became "incredibly bloated" and gained both informal and formal power.

He says it was difficult to know who to talk to in the Cabinet Office to get action, which was "critical" in the early months of Covid.

The wrong people were in the wrong jobs, he says, but doesn't say who he is referring to. It's a problem he says that worsened with the pandemic.

Cummings is asked where the majority of the government's power lay in January and February 2020, just before lockdown began.

Cummings says it "certainly wasn't in cabinet".

He adds that the cabinet secretary - the government's most senior civil servant, who was Mark Sedwill at the time - was far more powerful than the cabinet itself.