Dominic Cummings claims: Rees-Mogg defends Hancock as 'successful genius'

Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg has hailed Health Secretary Matt Hancock as a "successful genius" - after he was allegedly branded "hopeless" by the PM.

It comes after Boris Johnson's ex-aide Dominic Cummings released messages critical of the health secretary.

Mr Rees-Mogg dismissed them as "trivia", adding that Mr Hancock's work had made the world safer.

But Labour's leader said the prime minister's border policies showed he was "as hopeless as Hancock".

Sir Keir Starmer added that not imposing stronger controls on arrivals from India had forced the four-week extension of England's Covid restrictions.

• PM calls Hancock hopeless in texts revealed by Cummings

• Cummings' gradual reveal of what was in that box

• Fact-checking claims about the Delta variant

On Wednesday, Mr Cummings - who was forced out of Downing Street after an internal power struggle - released a series of WhatsApp exchanges between himself and his former boss, dated to early last year.

In one of them, Mr Johnson purportedly called Mr Hancock "Totally [expletive] hopeless".

In another, he appeared to say his procurement of personal protective equipment had been a "disaster," and that he wanted to hand some of Mr Hancock's duties to Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove.

Downing Street did not deny the authenticity of the messages, but insisted the prime minister had full confidence in the health secretary.

Asked on Thursday how he felt about the messages, Mr Hancock told reporters: "I'm not getting into that."

He added: "The prime minister and I have worked incredibly closely together in this last 18 months."

Thangham Debbonaire told MPs the public know when a minister is 'hopeless'

In the House of Commons on Thursday, Labour's Thangam Debbonaire asked: "Why did the prime minister keep on as health secretary someone he thought was hopeless in a global health crisis?

"The British people recognise incompetence and waste when they see it. They know what's right and what's not and they know when a minister is hopeless."

But Mr Rees-Mogg replied: "There's a great line from Dr [Samuel] Johnson, that in lapidary inscriptions [engravings in stone] a man is not on oath.

"And I think the same applies to text messages, which are essentially the trivia, the flotsam and jetsam, the ephemera of life, and they're fundamentally unimportant."

He praised the plan agreed at last weekend's G7 summit in Cornwall to distribute one billion Covid vaccines to poorer nations, lauding Mr Hancock's role in arranging the UK's contribution "so successfully".

'Hopeless as Hancock'

He called his cabinet colleague "the brilliant, the one and only successful genius who has been running health over the last 15 months", adding that "he has done so much to make not only the country but the world safer".

But speaking later on Thursday, Sir Keir Starmer criticised the government's decision not to add India to the travel red until 23 April, arguing it had hastened the spread of the Delta variant of the virus first identified there to the UK.

He said the spread of that variant had made the four-week delay to the next stage of England's unlocking - supported by Labour at a vote on Wednesday - "inevitable".

He said the Delta variant "wouldn't be here" if tougher travel rules had instead been applied after 1 April, calling it "the only reason we're not unlocking".

"There's only one reason we've got the Delta variant, and that's because the prime minister failed to secure the border," he added.

"So the prime minister is as hopeless as Hancock."