"THE problem in this crisis was very much lions led by donkeys over and over again.”

Those were the words of the Prime Minister’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings as he sat before the Commons Health and Social Care and Science and Technology Committees earlier today.

From PPE contracts and vaccines to mass testing, the special advisor - who came under fire last March over his 30-mile trip to Banard Castle - has given damning speeches about the Government's alleged handling of the pandemic.

The select committee quizzed Mr Cummings on the events leading up to the lockdown before breaking the long interrogation for a 20 minute rest break.

The focus of this afternoon's session will focus on the November lockdown after a series of local lockdowns under the Tier system.

In response to the claims so far, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “I don’t plan to get into various allegations and claims that have been made today, our focus is on recovering from the pandemic, moving through the road map and distributing the vaccines.”

Here's a round-up of some of the key points so far...

1. It all started with a whiteboard

There was “no functioning data system” to track the coronavirus pandemic in March last year, he said.

Mr Cummings said that on March 16, 2020, the best data system the Government had was a whiteboard on which he was doing calculations using his iPhone and data read out from scraps of paper by NHS chief executive Simon Stevens.

“There was no functioning data system,” he told MPs. “And that was connected with, there was no proper testing data.

2. 'When the public needed us most the Government failed'

Boris Johnson’s former aide said: “The truth is that senior ministers, senior officials, senior advisers like me fell disastrously short of the standards that the public has a right to expect of its Government in a crisis like this.

“When the public needed us most the Government failed.

“I would like to say to all the families of those who died unnecessarily how sorry I am for the mistakes that were made and for my own mistakes at that.”

3. 'Hollow' plans at the end of February

Mr Cummings said he regrets that he “did not follow up” and “push” on pandemic preparations at the end of January, adding that it was not until the end of February that it was realised the plans were “hollow”.

4. Skiing holidays

The advisor claimed the Government was not on a “war footing” in January and February and that “lots of key people were literally skiing” in February.

He said he told the private office in No 10 on January 25 that he wanted to look at pandemic planning and texted Health Secretary Matt Hancock on that day too.

He said he attended some meetings of Sage, of which the first meeting regarding Covid was on January 21.

Mr Cummings said he listened to a lot of Sage conversations in February and March “but a lot of it was over my head”.

5. "Swine flu" allegation

The Prime Minister’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings has claimed that Boris Johnson described it as the “new swine flu” in February 2020.

Giving evidence to the Commons Health and Social Care and Science and Technology Committees, Mr Cummings said: “In February the Prime Minister regarded this as just a scare story, he described it as the new swine flu.”

6. Herd immunity

He told MPs: “It’s important to bear in mind on this whole herd immunity point, obviously no one is saying that they want this to happen, the point is it was seen as an inevitability – you will either have herd immunity by September after a single peak or you will have herd immunity by January with a second peak, those are the only two options that we have.

“That was the whole logic of all of the discussions in January and in February and early March.”

7.  'A real choice between one peak and herd immunity by September'

Mr Cummings said Whitehall had made a series of wrong assumptions in their planning of the pandemic in relation to the inevitability of herd immunity early last year.

The former chief aide to the Prime Minister said: “Essentially the logic of the official plan from the Department of Health was that this disease is going to spread, vaccines are not going to be relevant in any way, shape or form over the relevant time period."

He said that in response to questions over the lockdowns being enforced across Wuhan and Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea, it was assumed the measures “won’t work for them and they will all have second peaks later on”.

“Secondly, it’s inconceivable that the British public are going to accept Wuhan-style measures here,” he added.

He described feeling “completely baffled” as to why No 10 has tried to deny that herd immunity was the official plan early last year.

"That was the official plan,” Mr Cummings said.

8. Boris, Carrie and his dog

Mr Cummings claims that rather than focusing on his warnings about Covid-19 on March 12, 2020, the Government was consumed with a potential bombing campaign in the Middle East at the request of Dominic Trump and a “trivial” story in the Times newspaper about Boris Johnson, his fiancee Carrie Symonds and their dog.

“The Prime Minister’s girlfriend was going completely crackers about this story and demanding that the press office deal with that," he said.

"Part of the building was arguing about whether or not we’re going to do quarantine or not do quarantine, the Prime Minister has his girlfriend going crackers about something completely trivial.”

9. Calls for Health Secretary Matt Hancock to be fired

Mr Cummings said: “I think the Secretary of State for Health should’ve been fired for at least 15, 20 things, including lying to everybody on multiple occasions in meeting after meeting in the Cabinet room and publicly.

“I said repeatedly to the Prime Minister that he should be fired, so did the cabinet secretary, so did many other senior people.”

10. 'Lions led by donkeys'

Mr Cummings claimed it was “completely crackers” Boris Johnson was in charge and that thousands of people in the country could provide better leadership than the Prime Minister and his contender, Jeremy Corbyn, in the 2019 election.

“There’s so many thousands and thousands of wonderful people in this country who could provide better leadership than either of those two,” he said.

“And there’s obviously something terribly wrong with the political parties if that’s the best that they can do.”

He also said that “in any sensible, rational government” he would have not had the power he did.

“It is completely crazy that I should have been in such a senior position in my personal opinion,” he said.

“I’m not smart. I’ve not built great things in the world.

“It’s just completely crackers that someone like me should have been in there, just the same as it’s crackers that Boris Johnson was in there, and that the choice at the last election was Jeremy Corbyn.

“And the problem in this crisis was very much lions led by donkeys over and over again.”

11. 'Anyone would have struggled to control the virus'

Mr Cummings admitted that anyone leading the country through a global pandemic would have struggled.

He told MPs: “I have been critical of the Prime Minister.

“But… if you dropped, you know, Bill Gates or someone like that into that job on the 1st of March, the most competent people in the world you could possibly find, any of them would have had a complete nightmare.

“There is no doubt that the Prime Minister made some very bad misjudgments and got some very serious things wrong.

“It’s also the case, there’s no doubt, that he was extremely badly let down by the whole system. And it was a system failure, of which I include myself in that as well, I also failed.”

12. Spiderman memes

Giving evidence to the Commons Health and Social Care and Science and Technology Committees, he said: “One of the fundamental problems that we find in this whole thing, it is a general problem in Whitehall but it was very, very clear and disastrous during Covid, is you have this system where on the one hand ministers are nominally responsible in various ways for a, b, c.

“But ministers can’t actually hire and fire anybody in the department. The officials are actually in charge of hiring and firing a, b, c.

“So, as soon as you have some kind of major problem you have kind of that Spiderman meme with both Spidermans pointing at each other, it’s like that but with everybody.

“So, you have [Matt] Hancock pointing at the permanent secretary, you have the permanent secretary pointing at Hancock, and they are both pointing at the Cabinet Office, the Cabinet Office is pointing back at them and all the different Spidermans are all pointing at each other saying ‘you are responsible’ and the problem is that everyone is right and everyone is unhappy.”

13. Covid-19 in care homes

The Prime Minister’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings said Government talk of putting a shield around care homes was “complete nonsense”.

Giving evidence to the Commons Health and Social Care and Science and Technology Committees, Mr Cummings said: “We were told categorically in March that people would be tested before they went back to homes, we only subsequently found out that that hadn’t happened.

“Quite the opposite of putting a shield around them, we sent people with Covid back to the care homes.”

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman responded by saying: “With regard to care homes, we’ve always been guided by the latest advice at that time and we’ve taken a number of steps to protect care home residents and those being discharged from hospitals into care homes.”

14. People should have been paid to self-isolate

The Government should have paid people to stay at home and isolate if they had Covid symptoms, Mr Cummings said.

Pointing to the South Korean system, he told MPs it was “a combination of stick and carrot”.

15. 'Prime minister did not want a serious border policy'

Mr Cummings has said Boris Johnson never wanted a serious border policy to combat coronavirus as he sought to prioritise the travel industry.

The former chief aide said the advice before April last year “in retrospect was obviously completely wrong”, including that it was “racist” to close borders.

“Fundamentally, there was no proper border policy because the Prime Minister never wanted a proper border policy," he told the panel.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “Obviously I would refute that. We have some of the toughest border measures in the world and we have taken action whenever necessary to keep the public safe.”

16. 'Chaos means that everyone has to look to me to see who’s in charge'

The Prime Minister’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings said that Boris Johnson had told him he liked the “chaos” because it meant “everyone has to look to me to see who is in charge”.

Mr Cummings said he told the Prime Minister in July he was going to leave by December 18 at the latest.

He added: “He [Mr Johnson] asked why and I said because this whole system is chaos, this building is chaos, you know perfectly well that from having worked with me I can get great teams together and manage them, but you are more frightened of me having the power to stop the chaos than you are of the chaos, and this is a completely unsustainable position for us both to be in.

“I am not prepared to work with people like Hancock any more, I have told you umpteen times you have got to remove him, you won’t, it’s going to be a disaster in the autumn and therefore it’s time that I should go.

“He laughed and said ‘you’re right, I am more frightened of you having the power to stop the chaos, chaos isn’t that bad, chaos means that everyone has to look to me to see who’s in charge’.”

17. 'I left out a crucial part of Barnard Castle story'

Mr Cummings said he left out a “crucial part” of his explanation as to why he broke lockdown rules when he held a press conference in Downing Street’s rose garden last year.

He said in February his wife had told him there was a gang outside the family home “saying they’re going to break into the house and kill everybody inside”, and it was decided with the Cabinet Office after that – combined with press coverage with prompted more threats – that he would move his family out of London to his parents’ home in County Durham regardless of lockdown rules.

“I ended up giving the whole rose garden thing where what I said was true, but we left out a kind of crucial part of it all,” he said.

18. Call for an urgent inquiry

Dominic Cummings has said “tens of thousands of people died who didn’t need to die” from coronavirus, as he said there was “absolutely no excuse for delaying” a public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic.

Mr Cummings told MPs a lot of the reasons why so many people died were “still in place now”.