Hunt asks why the NHS Test and Trace system didn't prevent the second and third lockdowns.

Hancock says again that building up the scale is "hard", adding that "building a plane in flight is harder than flying a plane that has been built for a while".

Asked about a Sage analysis in October 2020 that said Test and Trace only had a marginal impact on transmission, he says: "I think that was probably at that point a backward-looking assessment."

"I think that it had had an impact but it clearly hadn't had an impact big enough to bring the R down... to below one," he says.

"There is evidence now, as of today, that the surge testing and tracing and isolation system that we've got in place is working."

Hancock is also asked whether the state promising to make up any salary loss for those who were contact traced, and whether more involvement from local authorities, would have increased isolation compliance.

Hancock says the challenge was "the extent to which it might be gamed".

"You wouldn't want a situation in which if you tested positive you could then list your entire friendship network who all get a £500 payment," he says.

He adds that there had to be both a national and local tracing system.

Reality Check

Matt Hancock claimed that “there is no country in the world that uses only testing and doesn't have some form of lockdown as well”.

Jeremy Hunt said that South Korea has not had a lockdown.

It’s true that, unlike other countries, South Korea did not implement a national lockdown at the start of the pandemic, but managed to control transmissions by rapidly developing a “test, trace, isolate” system.

From 20 February 2020, all symptomatic people were tested, as well as their close contacts (regardless of whether they had symptoms or not).

Mass testing was also used in high-risk facilities such as hospitals and care homes, from mid-March.

All confirmed cases were either isolated in a hospital, at home, or in a residential treatment centre.

South Korea did implement some lockdown measures later including moving schools to remote learning in late February 2021 (they gradually reopened in May) and, in regions with a high rate of infections, people were asked to refrain from leaving their homes for at least 2 weeks.

Clark asks about Cummings' claim that former Cabinet Office official Helen McNamara said: "I think we're going to kill thousands, there's no plan, I think we're in huge trouble".

The health secretary says: "I have no idea if she said that."

He added: "I don't recall having any conversations with her at that time."

Referring to Cummings comments made before the same committee two weeks ago, Hancock went on to say: "I don't understand that testimony.

"I also note that no evidence has been put forward for much of this testimony."

Here's a reminder of Cumming's most explosive claims.

"We didn't do what was necessary early enough," says Greg Clark, there was no-one "taking a step back," he adds.

"How was it that you and everyone else didn't see the enormity of what was going on?" Clark asks. "Why did we miss the big picture?"

"The consequences and costs of lockdowns start immediately," Matt Hancock replies, and there was a presumption that "people would only put up with restrictions for a short period of time." That actually turned out to be wrong, he says.

Clark asks if it was the case that Hancock "simply accepted" the advice that was being given on how long people would tolerate restrictions for.

"Ultimately, you didn't know how long people would put up with it, it now seems obvious that people would put up with lockdowns," Hancock replies.

"These are huge decisions, to take those decisions against the scientific advice is an even bigger decision to make," he states.

"I remember thinking this is the most extraordinary thing that I've ever said," Hancock says, of when the Cabinet discussed telling all people to stop social contact.

On asymptomatic transmission, he says he "bitterly regrets" not assuming there was transmission of the virus between people who didn't have symptoms.

He says this went against all knowledge on coronaviruses at the time, and he was even advised by the World Health Organization on a call that this wasn't possible.

It was only at the beginning of April when the American Center for Disease Control said asymptomatic transmission was possible, that the conversation changed, he states.

Greg Clark says "we clearly didn't lock down early enough". He asks if it was not seen that "the mathematics of this was pretty stark" and the virus could cause 400,000 deaths if left unchecked.

He asks how this was "missed for so long, for six to eight weeks".

"We knew about this problem from the start," replies Hancock, "the challenge from the early weeks of March" was to make a "massive judgement... based on incomplete information".

He says he asked for a "reasonable worst case scenario" and was given a planning assumption based on the Spanish Flu. He says this assumption had 820,000 deaths, and he was not happy with that.

"In the middle of February the scientific advice confirmed that the reasonable worst case scenario could be taken as red, that it was as bad as Spanish Flu".

"As health secretary, you're always worried about new pathogens," he states.

"On the week beginning the 9 March, the data started following the reasonable worst case scenario," he adds.

Back to care homes, and Labour's Rebecca Long-Bailey says a whistleblower claimed that PHE's initial advice was to test residents on discharge from hospital.

Hancock says he had "no recollection" of such initial advice.

Long-Bailey then asks about an allegation that PHE's advice was "softened" in March "at the request" of the Department of Health and Social Care

"Not that I'm aware of," Hancock says.

He says again that the clinical advice at the time had three parts:

• That testing turnaround was about four days, so if a care home resident were tested, that test could come back negative four days later - but they could have caught Covid in hospital during that time
• That asymptomatic testing was "likely to give you a false negative"
• Again, that "infection prevention and control" in care homes was the "most important thing"

Asked whether he will provide copies of internal advice and his written responses, Hancock says "yes".

Laura Trott asks the health secretary about the UK's pandemic preparedness.

"We were ready for something Ebola or a flu pandemic," he responds, but points out that Covid was a "completely novel virus - very different even from Sars and Mers."

The number one difference is that coronavirus has asymptomatic transmission, he says.

He insists the government's existing plans were incredibly useful in some ways - for example a draft bill that enabled the Coronavirus Act - but admitted there were definitely lessons to be learned.

He says: "In some areas we were weak, especially in testing."

Asked if he think we should have learned more from Sars and Mers, he admits "we could have done better" but adds "other things weren't predictable".

The health secretary also said we need to have a standing testing capacity at scale and contact tracing capacity "which we retain in good times so that we are ready to pounce" if and when another virus emerges.

Turning to the issue of borders, he says the clinical advice the government received was that unilaterally taking action on borders would only delay the spread by about a week.

"The only way the world could have stopped this virus getting out of China was for China to stop people leaving its borders," he says.

Reality Check

Health Secretary Matt Hancock was asked an initial question about access to personal protective equipment (PPE).

“There was never a point at which NHS providers couldn’t get access to PPE,” he said, citing a report on the subject from the National Audit Office (NAO)., external

The report said: “The NHS provider organisations we spoke to told us that, while they were concerned about the low stocks of PPE, they were always able to get what they needed in time.”

But it went on to say that this “was not the experience reported by many front-line workers” and “feedback from care workers, doctors and nurses show that significant numbers of them considered that they were not adequately protected during the height of the first wave”.

It added that “government structures were overwhelmed in March 2020” and that while the government did then set up structures to obtain PPE, that “it took a long time for it to receive the large volumes of PPE ordered”.

“There were further difficulties with distribution to providers and many front-line workers reported experiencing shortages of PPE as a result,” the report concluded.

It also said: “The initial focus on the NHS meant adult social care providers felt particularly unsupported.”

Clarification: This post has been edited, with more detail added, to make clear that the NAO report stated NHS providers said they had been able to get what they needed, but it also said this did not reflect the experiences reported by many front-line workers.

Jeremy Hunt asks about how much the government used the line that they were "following the science".

"There are examples where ministers make decisions that are different to the scientific advice," replies Hancock.

He says those returning from Wuhan in China in January 2020 were quarantined, while the scientific advisers said those people could self-isolate at home.

"We did accept and implement the scientific advice" on lockdown, he states. "I take full responsibility for the decisions that I take but also made in my name as Secretary of State".

Hancock trying to diminish Cummings' impactpublished at 10:23 British Summer Time 10 June 2021

10:23 BST 10 June 2021

Ben Wright
BBC political correspondent

While Dominic Cummings tried to skewer Matt Hancock with attacks on his ability and competence, Hancock is trying to side-step any mention of the former adviser.

He is relying on the backing of the PM for cover and trying to diminish the impact of Cummings at the time.

Responding to Cummings' claim that the 100,000 a day testing target was "criminal", Hancock says he put himself "on the line" by setting it and on the advice of his team.

But the MPs questioning him want to know why others in government were so sceptical. Hancock is taking full responsibility for it.

“I’ve never been to business school” he says, under pressure to explain why he set the target.

But he insists it was the right decision to force Whitehall to ramp up capacity.

Greg Clark asks about the target of doing 100,000 tests a day by the end of April 2020. Clark asks why Hancock's own advisers were not wishing to associate themselves with this target.

Hancock says "we didn't know we were going to hit it, sometimes you have to put yourself in jeopardy".

"In this case, I knew that we needed a radical increase in testing... over 100,000 is a good number for a big target," he states.

The 100,000 target mattered because "it galvanised the whole system," he says.

"The prime minister was absolutely behind me," on the target, he adds.

Jeremy Hunt points to the testing and tracing policies rolled out in countries like South Korea and Taiwan at the start of the pandemic, and asks Matt Hancock whether the UK had a "blind spot" in this area.

Hancock says there is a "significant number of lessons" from this.

"One is that the need for a rapidly scalable testing operation must be part of pandemic preparedness and this country did not have that," he says.

He says areas where the pandemic response was strong in the UK - such as the NHS response and scientific response - were all areas where the UK had "prior strength".

However, the country didn't have a "major diagnostics" capability, he says, with its tracing and isolation system built for smaller outbreaks.

"The lack of that capacity at the start meant that the options that we had were fewer," he adds.

Asked whether he asked Sage to analyse responses in Asia, he says: "What I was doing was asking around the world for who's got the best response. All of these questions [are] predicated on the idea that we could have had more tests. We couldn't."

A crisis laced with rivalriespublished at 10:09 British Summer Time 10 June 2021

10:09 BST 10 June 2021

Ben Wright
BBC political correspondent

So it seems Matt Hancock knew Dominic Cummings was trying to get the PM to sack him last spring because it was being briefed to newspapers.

Presumably by Cummings, the health secretary implies.

But Hancock says he had the support of Boris Johnson throughout. This was a crisis laced with personal animosity and rivalries.

Chair of the health committee Jeremy Hunt asks Hancock about the advice he was given on testing and says it appears it was "either lockdown or let the virus spread".

Hancock says there is no country in the world without testing and some sort of lockdown but Hunt disagrees, pointing out South Korea as an example.

He says: "Unlike other countries, we did not go into this with a testing capacity - we had to target the testing where it was clinically most needed.

"The clinical advice I received was that testing people asymptomatically would lead to false positives."

He said that on 28 January, Sage - the government's scientific advisory group - said it was not useful, adding: "But that advice was later changed."

Hunt says he accepts that the health secretary followed the advice he was given but is questioning what that advice was.

"A lot of this 'captain hindsight'," says Hunt.

Greg Clark asks if there's anything Matt Hancock wants to say as a "right of reply" to Dominic Cummings' evidence.

Matt Hancock says it is "telling" that Mr Cummings has not yet provided written evidence of what he said.

He says he has approached his job with "honesty and integrity," adding "I can be quite forceful to get something through when it needs to happen".

"We did manage to improve the system over time" on care homes, he states.

He says he "welcomes the opportunity to tell you the truth of what happened".

Mr Clark asks why Mr Cummings was "so withering" against Mr Hancock.

Hancock says he has "no idea".

"Did you know he wanted the prime minister to fire you?" asks Clark

"Yes, because I read the newspapers at the time," Hancock replies.

One of Cummings' claims was that he and the PM were "told categorically" in March 2020 that care home residents in hospital would be tested before they went back - but "only subsequently found out that that hadn't happened".

Asked about this, Hancock says: "We set out a policy that people would be tested when tests were available.

"Then I set about building the testing capacity to deliver on that."

He says he followed clinical advice that the "most important thing was infection prevention control in care homes", adding that the "strongest route" was through community transmission.

Hancock says that he makes commitments to the PM, and "I get on and do them and I deliver".

Hancock hits back at Cummings' hostility towards himpublished at 09:53 British Summer Time 10 June 2021

09:53 BST 10 June 2021

Ben Wright
BBC political correspondent

Matt Hancock again denies the most explosive claim by Dominic Cummings - that the health secretary "categorically" told the PM in March last year that people would be tested before being discharged to care homes.

Hancock says he told the PM that people would be tested when the capacity had been created.

Matt Hancock says he has “no idea” why Dominic Cummings was so hostile to him and hits back at the former No 10 adviser, saying government has worked much better since he left

Hancock says the UK started buying new PPE in February but in March, China brought in new global restrictions.

He says the UK had to remove a piece of bureaucracy in the way that put a limit on the price that could be paid for PPE.

But he says there was never a national shortage of PPE because of the action the government took.

"My whole approach has been a team effort - you can't respond to a pandemic by pointing fingers," he says.

He said he knows there was a cap on the price paid for PPE, adding that he asked for the cap to be removed and the chancellor did so.

He says 70% of PPE is now made in the UK.

Greg Clark, the Chair of the Science and Technology Committee opened the session.

He says that Dominic Cummings has not yet sent his written evidence to the Committee to substantiate his claims against Matt Hancock.

He asks Hancock if he ever said anything to the prime minister which wasn't true.

"No," Matt Hancock replies.

"Everybody got the Covid treatment that they needed," he states, "there was no point at which I was advised people did not get the treatment they needed."

"Getting hold of PPE was always a huge challenge," he states "but there was never a point at which NHS providers could not get hold of PPE."