What did Dominic Cummings say? As it happened

1. The PM's former chief adviser faced questions about his time working in No 10 during the pandemic
2. He said by October 2020 he regarded Boris Johnson as "unfit" for the job of PM
3. Mr Cummings said "senior ministers, senior officials, senior advisers like me, fell disastrously short"
4. "Tens of thousands of people died, who didn't need to die," he claimed
5. He also accused the PM of being like an out-of-control shopping trolley
6. Mr Cummings said Health Secretary Matt Hancock should have been sacked for "15 or 20 things"
7. He also said Mr Hancock insisted people would be tested before being sent into care homes - but weren't
8. The ex-adviser said he was "extremely sorry" for visiting Barnard Castle last year

Cummings to claim PM wanted to see Queen last March

Laura Kuenssberg

Political editor

Dominic Cummings is expected to say Boris Johnson wanted to go to see the Queen in person for his weekly meeting on 18 March, despite public health risks known by then, but was persuaded not to go.

Downing Street denies this happened - adding the PM's audience with the monarch that week took place on the phone, shortly before the Queen was going to Windsor for her safety.

Cummings tweets whiteboard pic ahead of session

Ahead of his appearance, Mr Cummings has tweeted a picture of what he says was a whiteboard shown to the prime minister on 14 March, with a suggested “plan B” for handling the pandemic.

The picture appears to show an estimate that “plan A” – the government’s initial strategy of mitigating but not supressing the peak of the pandemic – would lead to 4,000 deaths a day.

It adds that under "plan B," the government would be "more aggressive" in suppressing the virus the following week, with a "full lockdown" implemented before a "collapse" in the NHS.

Dominic Cummings

Reality Check

He's the Barnard Castle guy

PA Media

Dominic Cummings held a press conference in the garden of No 10 last year to try to explain his trip to County Durham during the first lockdown

For many people outside Westminster, Dominic Cummings is best known for his trip to County Durham and Barnard Castle during the first lockdown.

On 27 March he drove his family from London to Durham to stay at his father’s farm after his wife fell ill with coronavirus symptoms. The next day he too developed symptoms and was self-isolating.

According to government guidelines, the whole family should have stayed at home in London. But Cummings said he feared that if both he and his wife became ill they would be unable to look after their young son.

Durham police said Cummings did not break the law.

Two weeks later he was cleared to return to work, but decided to go for a drive first to see if he could safely make the journey back to London.

On 12 April, his wife’s birthday, he drove his family to Barnard Castle, where they walked by the riverbank. Durham police subsequently said that if he had been stopped on the way to or from the town he would have been told to return to his father’s property.

Mr Cummings insisted he did nothing wrong at any point. But he was heavily criticised for ignoring government guidelines, and undermining the credibility of its public statements.

Reality Check looked at the some of the claims surrounding the Barnard Castle row at the time, which you can read here.

Cummings arrives in Westminster

PA Media

Mr Cummings has arrived in Westminster, where his session with MPs is due to begin in around 15 minutes.

Why does Cummings' testimony matter?

Laura Kuenssberg

Political editor

Dominic Cummings was in the room when decisions about lives and deaths were made during the Covid emergency.

He’s made no secret of his frustration now, at the speed of decision making when the virus had arrived in the UK, blasting the level of preparation, and the government’s original plan.

But the former adviser’s real fire today is expected to be turned on the prime minister’s attitude to bringing back restrictions in September when Covid was again taking hold, saying No 10 did not act until later on.

It’s understood he will share his belief that the failure to toughen the rules led to a much bigger outbreak of the disease.

And he’ll suggest that was Boris Johnson’s terrible mistake - because, by then, the government had a much better understanding of the virus, it could have predicted what would happen, and prevented much of it.

Yet Cummings cannot extricate himself from what went wrong.

Few others had more influence over the decisions that were made.

Downing Street said: “throughout this pandemic, the government’s priority has been to save lives, protect the NHS and support people’s jobs and livelihoods across the United Kingdom.”

And the backdrop to his evidence is a spectacular political bust up between the two.

The MPs are likely also to press him over his trip to Barnard Castle during lockdown.

Who is Dominic Cummings?

Reuters

The former Vote Leave campaign director for the 2016 Brexit referendum, Dominic Cummings became Boris Johnson's chief adviser in Downing Street and then helped the prime minister to the Conservative general election victory in 2019.

Always a figure of fascination in Westminster, he briefly became a household name last summer, when it emerged he had travelled from London to his parents’ home in County Durham during the coronavirus lockdown.

Despite intense pressure to resign, with the support of the prime minister, he managed to keep his job – only to leave at the end of the year amid reports of infighting at No 10.

There has since been speculation that he is the source of several damaging stories about Mr Johnson, including the row about the funding of the refurbishment of the prime minister’s Downing Street flat.

Now, he is re-emerging on the political scene with damaging claims about the early handling of the pandemic.

What exactly is happening today?

Starting at 09:30 BST, Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, will appear in front of a hearing of the Commons Health and Social Care and Science and Technology committees.

The MPs’ are holding a joint inquiry into how the coronavirus pandemic was handled.

They are looking into “lessons learned” from the pandemic – and Cummings’ evidence is likely to create waves, in Westminster and beyond.

The focus is expected to be on decision-making in the early months of the pandemic, including what ministers knew when, border policy, and the timing of lockdowns.

We're expecting a marathon four hours of questions - we'll bring you full coverage as it happens here.

Good Morning

HOC

Hello and welcome to our live coverage from Westminster.

This morning, we're going to bring you Dominic Cummings' appearance in front of a joint committee of MPs.

The PM's former chief adviser - turned arch critic - will face questions about the government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

It's expected he could make some controversial claims about decision making in No 10.

We'll bring you all the developments as they happen, with analysis from our political correspondent Leila Nathoo, health correspondent Nick Triggle, and the BBC Reality Check Team.

Thanks for joining us.