HEALTH Secretary Matt Hancock told MPs the “unsubstantiated allegations” from Dominic Cummings “are not true”.

He faced questions from MPs about Mr Cummings' damning revelations in the Commons. 

Boris Johnson’s former aide accused Mr Hancock of repeatedly lying, being disastrously incompetent and claimed he should have been fired on multiple occasions during the course of the pandemic.

Forced to go to the House of Commons to respond to the claims, Mr Hancock said: “These unsubstantiated allegations around honesty are not true.

“I’ve been straight with people in public and in private throughout.”

During a seven-hour evidence session to MPs on Wednesday, Mr Cummings claimed his former boss, the Prime Minister, is “unfit” to lead and his Government’s failures had led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

Apart from his damning assessment of Mr Johnson, Mr Cummings saved his fiercest criticism for Mr Hancock over failings around care homes policy, personal protective equipment (PPE) procurement and his public pledge on a testing target which caused disruption in Whitehall.

Mr Cummings told MPs that the Prime Minister had been told “categorically in March that people will be tested before they went back to care homes” from hospital by Mr Hancock – something which did not happen.

It was “complete nonsense” to claim the Government had put a shield around care homes, Mr Cummings claimed.

He said Mr Hancock should have been sacked on 15 to 20 occasions and Whitehall’s top mandarin at the time, Sir Mark Sedwill, had “lost confidence in the Secretary of State’s honesty”.

Conservative MP Dehenna Davison (Bishop Auckland) had a Barnard Castle eye test chart behind her on a wall as she asked a question in the Commons.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s former senior aide Dominic Cummings found himself in the focus of a media storm last year after driving his family to County Durham during the first coronavirus lockdown and then taking a trip to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight.

Ms Davison was appearing virtually in the chamber during Cabinet Office questions.

The Northern Echo: Picture: HoCPicture: HoC

Mr Hancock had declined to answer questions about Dominic Cummings’ criticism of his handling of the pandemic as he left for work on Thursday morning.

As he arrived at his north London home on Wednesday evening, after Cummings' evidence session, Health Secretary Matt Hancock was asked for his reaction to Dominic Cummings’ allegations to MPs.

Mr Hancock replied: “I haven’t seen this performance today in full, and instead I’ve been dealing with getting the vaccination rollout going, especially to over-30s, and saving lives.

“I’ll be giving a statement to the House of Commons tomorrow and I’ll have more to say then.”