Image source, HoC

Conservative Cherilyn Mackrory says given the gravity of the situation the government faced at the start of the pandemic, and the "disruptive force" Cummings was, she wants to congratulate Hancock.

Hancock says the public expects the government to stay focused and that's what he will do.

Dealing with the pandemic is his "total focus", he says.

The SNP's Martyn Day asks if Hancock agrees the UK government failed the public and lives could have been saved if he had acted sooner?

He says there is no time to wait for a public inquiry.

Hancock says he insisted work on the vaccine was driven as fast as possible.

"Of course it is right that we learn from everything" all the way through Hancock says, rather than in an inquiry, and that's what he is doing, he says.

Jeremy Hunt, the chair of the health select committee, says the allegations from Dominic Cummings should be treated as unproven until evidence is provided.

Hunt instead asks about the Indian variant. Earlier, Prof Neil Ferguson said the Indian variant was now the dominant variant in most local authorities.

Matt Hancock says it's true the Indian variant is spreading across the country - but estimates vary over which proportion of cases are that variant.

"My assessment is that it is too early now to say yet whether we can take the full step four on 21 June," says Hancock.

"We'll only do that if it's safe," he says.

He says there will be a formal assessment ahead of 14 June as to what step the government can take on 21 June - he says that decision will be "driven by data", "guided by the science" and "fully transparent".

Image source, HoC

Hancock says he has been "straight with people in public and private throughout".

Every day since he started working on the response to the pandemic last January, he said he thinks "what must I do to protect life?".

"That is the job of a health secretary in a pandemic," he says.

Hancock says he has taken an approach of openness, transparency and explanation of what we do and do not know.

He says he's attended the House of Commons more than 60 times since January 2020 and he and the prime minister have taken part in 84 press conferences, as well as answering questions from the public, media and colleagues.

He says "sometimes what we've had to say hasn't been easy" and the government has had to "level with people" when things have been going in the wrong direction.

"What matters remains the same - getting vaccinated, getting tested, delivering for our country. Overcoming this disease and saving lives - and that is what matters to the British people," he says.

Image source, HoC

The shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth is asking questions now.

He says Hancock did not reply to any of Dominic Cummings' allegations from yesterday in his opening remarks.

He says if they are true, the health secretary is in breach of the ministerial code and if they are not then the PM brought a fantasist in to Downing Street.

Families deserve answers, he says, and why wasn't a cautionary approach taken?

Hancock says the allegations are serious and he welcomes the opportunity to put things on the record in the House.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock is making a statement - the first time since yesterday's explosive claims from Dominic Cummings, including that Hancock lied about his handling of coronavirus. He has previously rejected the claims.

Hancock begins by saying what the government has done to handle the pandemic has been "unprecedented".

He says the government has been straight with MPs and the people.

Of course there were unprecedented difficulties, he says - but "this pandemic isn't over yet".

He talks about the vaccination programme, saying it has reached 73% of the adult population - but a quarter still haven't been jabbed.

And he says the government is on track to meet its goal to offer all adults a jab by the end of July.

"We have met every goal we have set," he says - and defends setting and meeting ambitious targets.

He says there are many challenges - but the best way through is to work together.

The Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, is in the House of Commons. He'll be responding to an urgent question from Labour following Dominic Cummings' evidence yesterday. It should last for about an hour.

Stay with us for updates.

Image source, AAP/Reuters

A seven-day lockdown has been announced in Victoria, Australia's second most populous state, amid a fast-spreading outbreak in its capital, Melbourne.

The lockdown will begin at midnight on Thursday - 15:00 BST.

There is growing anxiety over the outbreak that reminds many locals of a devastating second wave that swept the state last year.

And authorities have so far found 26 cases and identified 150 sites where people may have been exposed to the virus.

The cases involve a contagious strain of the virus - B.1.617.

Our Australia correspondent Shaimaa Khalil says while 26 cases is low compared to the rest of the world, there's an estimated 10,000 contacts of those cases and not enough people have been vaccinated.

She says people there are nervous and anxious. Photos of empty supermarket shelves have circulated on social media with someone tweeting: "Here we go again!".

Others are sympathising with the city saying: "Take a deep breath Melbourne."

Full story here.

Image source, Reuters

We are expecting to hear from Health Secretary Matt Hancock shortly.

He's addressing MPs in the House of Commons to answer an urgent question tabled by Labour about the government's handling of Covid.

It comes after Dominic Cummings, the PM's ex-adviser, said the health secretary had lied and should have been sacked. Hancock's spokesman has "absolutely" rejected the claims.

During his appearance before a committee of MPs investigating "lessons learnt" from the pandemic on Wednesday, Cummings was scathing about Hancock.

He argued the health secretary "should have been fired for at least 15 to 20 things including lying to everybody on multiple occasions in meeting after meeting in the Cabinet Room and publicly".

Here's a clip of the health secretary yesterday, in which he says he did not watch Cummings giving evidence yesterday "in full".

Image source, PA Media

There has been confusion in recent days after ministers backtracked over travel advice for eight UK areas worst hit by the Indian coronavirus variant.

Those in the areas - Bolton, Blackburn, Kirklees, Bedford, Burnley, Leicester, Hounslow and North Tyneside - had initially been asked to avoid non-essential travel altogether. They've now been told to minimise travel in and out of those areas.

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick says the advice - which also covers socialising - "could have been better communicated".

The measures were added to the government's website on Friday - but local leaders said they had not been told of the changes.

Jenrick tells BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I think the guidance that was put out to local councils could have been better communicated.

"But we are going through a period now where we're moving away from a legalistic approach, where regulations are set out in law, it's black and white, and we're moving into a phase where we're asking people to show personal responsibility.

"And so that does mean that we're going to have to think carefully about how we communicate that to the public."

The amended advice - updated on Tuesday evening - asks people in the affected areas to meet outdoors and stay two metres apart from anyone in other households, wherever those things are possible.

During his evidence yesterday, Dominic Cummings criticised the advice from behavioural scientists, saying the thinking was that "the British public will not accept a lockdown".

But our fact checkers found that minutes from a meeting of the behavioural science advisers, external, SPI-B on 12 March suggest they thought people would accept restrictions.

Prof Stephen Reicher, a behavioural science expert who sits on a sub-committee of Sage, also says Dominic Cummings was wrong on that point.

He agrees with Cummings' take that "we were too late in locking down, that we didn't develop a test and trace system quickly enough, that we didn't control our borders... many of these mistakes that are still going on".

But he says a "number of the claims that were made were simply inaccurate".

"So, going specifically to the question of the advice on lockdown from the behavioural scientists, what Dominic Cummings suggested was that the behavioural scientists were saying that people just wouldn't wear the restrictions, and that either they shouldn't be imposed at all, or else that they should be delayed. Now that's simply untrue..."

He says "600 behavioural scientists wrote to the prime minister saying 'look, we do not recognise this notion of what was then called behavioural fatigue, that people lack the resilience to be able to put up with measures'."

Image source, Getty Images

Anyone over the age of 18 in Northern Ireland can now book their Covid-19 vaccine.

Appointments are available to book online at the Health and Social Care booking website , externalor by telephone on 0300 200 7813.

Health Minister Robin Swann says it is "welcome news for young people who have been waiting patiently for their turn to get the jab".

Vaccine supplies are limited, however, with the Department of Health saying there will be about 20,000 slots available weekly.

The limit is to help manage the availability of the Pfizer vaccine after regulators said under-40s should be given an alternative to the AstraZeneca vaccine, the department says.

However, it says anyone between 18 and 39 years old can still make an informed decision to have the AstraZeneca jab.

More than one million people in Northern Ireland have received a first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine so far.

Read more.

We've got a story today about how GPs in England are warning they could be overwhelmed by rising demand from patients.

Analysis of NHS England data by the Health Foundation found more than 28 million appointments were booked in March, among the highest recorded.

"We have almost a tsunami of patients coming to us - it feels like the river has flooded the banks," says Doncaster-based GP, Dr Dean Eggitt, who says he's never seen anything like this.

"It just keeps coming and coming and coming in this one massive, endless wave of patients who all are ill and need help and input.

"They're sick, they're complex and we've got very few places to send them. I wouldn't want to be my patient right now."

But he says he worries most about the "hidden wave of patients who don't get through".

One of those is Sharron, who ended up in hospital after she struggled on at home for weeks getting more and more sick. She was eventually diagnosed with colitis and had lost so much blood, she needed four emergency blood transfusions.

She says a combination of busy phone lines and not wanting to bother the practice meant she deteriorated at home. "When I finally got through I knew I was really poorly, I had never felt so ill in my life."

Read more here.

Image source, Getty Images

Namibia's President Hage Geingob has tested positive for Covid-19.

First Lady Monica Geingos also tested positive for the virus and the couple are in isolation.

The Namibian presidency Twitter account said the couple were in "good spirits":

Namibia has recorded 53,432 confirmed cases of the virus and 779 deaths, according to data published by the World Health Organization.

The country has administered 67,984 vaccine doses.

Fran Hall, from Denham, lost her husband Steve to coronavirus, three weeks after they married.

"I don't know whether if there had been a second lockdown - as Dominic Cummings said yesterday was recommended to the prime minister to be put in place in September - I don't know if that had happened whether Steve would still be here.

"But I feel really strongly that if decisions right back at the beginning... had been made differently and the virus hadn't been allowed to spread the way that it did into care homes, into hospitals, into the community, I really think that Steve might still be here.

"It breaks my heart to think of that."

Fran says "we can't wait until next year" for an inquiry.

She is asked whether an apology would make a difference, and says she appreciated Cummings' apology yesterday.

But she adds: "A sorry doesn't cut.

"For me the best apology would be making sure that things change."

Image source, EPA

President Joe Biden has ordered the US intelligence services to examine where the virus came from and report back to him within 90 days.

It comes after reports in US media that there is growing speculation Covid-19 accidentally leaked from a Chinese laboratory.

China's US embassy described this as a conspiracy theory and suggested the virus could have come from a US lab instead.

Biden says Washington and its allies will continue to press Beijing to engage in a full, transparent investigation.

Read more here.

The head of the National Care Association - which represents care providers - is asked whether Matt Hancock has her full confidence.

"Unfortunately, no," says Anita Astle.

"Over the pandemic, there was a delay in relevant guidance, accurate guidance, helpful guidance," she says - saying guidance was often issued, "and it still is", on a Friday or Sunday night and care homes were expected to follow it on Monday.

"Totally unrealistic, totally unfair. We need to learn from this and make changes," she says.

"We struggled to access PPE, there was no strategy," she adds - and says the problems with care homes "went unnoticed until various people in the sector raised the issues that we were experiencing".

Dominic Cummings' accusations cannot easily be dismissedpublished at 08:45 BST 27 May 2021

08:45 BST 27 May 2021

Laura Kuenssberg
Political editor

Not the prime minister, nor the health secretary, nor the government's top scientists, nor the Whitehall machine, nor even Dominic Cummings himself, escaped the barbs yesterday.

The hours of testimony gave a disturbing sense of an administration simply overwhelmed by the scale of the Covid crisis at the start of last year - scrambling, and failing to keep up on many fronts.

It is the first time one of those involved in making the decisions during those risky months has admitted in public that so many mistakes were made.

It is the first time some of Boris Johnson's most controversial alleged comments about Covid have been put on the record, despite the prime minister's denial.

And it is the first time, most importantly perhaps, that someone who wielded significant power has said publicly that tens of thousands of people lost their lives in this country unnecessarily.

Imagine what that must have felt like for a bereaved family, or care home staff to hear.

The relationship between Cummings and Johnson is bitter, and broken.

The former adviser's suggestion now, that the prime minister is not fit for office, is extraordinary but not, in fact, surprising given how toxic it became.

And remember, Cummings' own reputation is not stain free.

Read more from Laura.

Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick has been on BBC Breakfast giving the government's take in response to the claims made by Dominic Cummings yesterday.

He says at the time the government "did everything that they could, in the national interest as they saw it, with the imperfect information that was available at the time".

Jenrick says the government is learning the lessons of what could have been done differently - but says things also went well, such as the vaccine rollout.

"I am sorry for the errors and mistakes we may have made," says Jenrick, when pressed for an apology - but says the government was in an "unprecedented situation".

"I can say that at every turn he [the prime minister] was acting with the best motives and intentions with the information that was available, which was limited and imperfect."

He responds to one of the allegations made by Dominic Cummings, that "the problem in this crisis was very much lions led by donkeys over and over again".

Asked how he felt about being called a donkey, Jenrick says: "Well I don't think that's a fair assessment of what happened.

"I think the prime minister led the country through this with huge determination and resilience.

"He himself almost died of Covid at one point, bounced back, got back into running the country incredibly quickly.

"We had brilliant scientific advisers like Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance. We had the vaccine taskforce that the prime minister established himself.

"These things didn't happen by accident, they happened because of active decisions made by the prime minister."

Image source, Reuters

Prof Neil Ferguson, an expert on the spread of infectious diseases, has been asked this morning about the Indian variant and how quickly it is spreading in the UK.

“So it’s now in well over the majority of local authority areas in the country and is now the dominant strain,” he tells BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

“That’s obviously concerning. We’re still working on trying to assess exactly how much more transmissible it is.

“On top of that, we know that it partially evades the immunity generated by vaccines. Thankfully, if people have had two doses then there is still a large amount of immunity, protection, remaining but it’s not quite as good as it was before.”

He adds the next step of lockdown easing – due to happen from 21 June in England – “is rather in the balance”.

“The data collected in the next two to three weeks will be critical," Prof Ferguson says.

“On the positive side, we do have very low infection levels still.

“The key issue as to whether we can go forward is: will the surge caused by the Indian variant – and we do think there will be a surge – be more than has been already planned in the relaxation measures?”