Dominic Cummings has apologised for not pushing people enough to plan for the pandemic and claimed Boris Johnson thought there was nothing to be frightened of.

The former Prime Minister's chief advisor has been giving evidence on the handling of the coronavirus pandemic to senior MPs.

The committee, led by Tunbridge Wells MP Greg Clark, has heard from Mr Cummings that ministers "fell disastarously short of the standards of the public has a right to expect" and he apologised for not following up on promises the country were ready for the pandemic.

The former adviser, who left Downing Street last year after a behind-the-scenes power struggle, told the MPs: “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.”

When asked if he advised the PM to go to the cobra meetings he said it wasn't "the best use of everyone's time".

He added: "One of the huge problems was things leaking from cobra - practically everything - so I had conversations that I didn't want leaking and I had them privately.

"Look at the record. The supposedly secret meeting for Brexit leaked like a sieve continually.

"I was having meetings about it but with people like (Sir) Partick (Vallance)."

He went on to say that in February Prime Minister Boris Johnson did not think coronavirus was something to be worried about.

"The only question we had was of timing. I'm baffled why number 10 are denying that..."

He said: “The view of various officials inside No 10 was – if we have the Prime Minister chairing Cobra meetings and he just tells everyone ‘it’s swine flu, don’t worry about it, I’m going to get Chris Whitty to inject me live on TV with coronavirus so everyone realises it’s nothing to be frightened of’ – that would not help actually serious planning."

On the issue of herd immunity, Mr Cummings explained no one wanted herd immunity but it was seen as an inevitability.

He said: "The approach was to introduce measures to delay it and push the peak below the capacity of the health system

"In response to the argument 'but look at what they're doing in Wuhan' the entire assumption was first of all that won't work for them and they'll have second peaks later on.

"Second, it's inconceivable the British public will accept Wuhan style measures here and even if we suppress it completely we will have a second peak in winter when the NHS is already under pressure

"No one is saying they wanted herd immunity to happen. It was seen as an inevitability. You will either have herd immunity in September after a single peak or in January after a second peak. That was the whole logic which is why on week of the 9th we started to talk publicly about herd immunity

"It was an unavoidably fact. The only question we had was of timing. I'm baffled why number 10 are denying that. That was the plan."

Jeremy Hunt, chair of the health select committee, asked Mr Cummings about his view of the announcement on March 16 that people should socially distance but pubs were not being closed.

He said on March 12 he sent a message to the Prime Minsiter warning "we've got big problems, the cabinet office are terrifyingly ****, no plans, totally behind the pace, we must announce today not next week if you feel ill with cold of flu stay home."

He warned of 100-500,000 deaths and said they started the day thinking all about Covid. But they were derailed by national security saying Trump wants them to join a bombing campaign in the middle east.

He said: "Everything to do with Covid that day was disrupted.

"It surrounds so surreal it couldn't possibly be true but that day The Times ran a story about the Prime Minister's girlfriend and their dog.

"Part of the building was arguing about bombing in Iraq, part arguing about quarantine and the prime minister has his girlfriend going crackers about something completely trivial."

He said in the end they decided to push ahead with quarantine quickly and he was convinced not to go ahead with the bombing and that night they agreed to hit the panic button.

"On Friday 13th we looked through all of this information and Patrick said it seems something has gone fundamentally wrong in this system. We're going to smash through the capacity of the NHS."

This was the day he decided the PM needed to ditch the official plan and "we were heading for the biggest disaster since 1940".

"We said on the 14th to the Prime Minister you are going to have to lockdown but there is no plan.

"This is like a scene from Independence Day and Geoff Goldberg saying the aliens are here and you have no plan.

"There's no doubt in retrospect it was a huge failure of mine and I bitterly regret I didn't hit the emergency panic button earlier than I did.

"My worry was on the one hand at the end of February you could know that a whole bunch of things were wrong. But I was frightened of the consequences of me pulling an emergency string and saying the official plan is wrong because what if I'm wrong. What if we do it and that's a disaster.

There wasn't any plan for furlough. They had to pull that out of nothing..."

"In retrospect it's clear the advice was wrong and we should have shut down on March 8 at the latest. I think it's unarguable.

"When we did say that people came to me and said "what are you doing". I'm sorry I didn't do it earlier but it seemed like such a massive thing.

"The whole thing seemed like an out of control movie. In retrospect we should have acted earlier but we didn't."

When asking about the approach to lockdown, Mr Cummings reiterated the view that the east Asian approach would not have been accepted in Britain.

He then went on to criticise the leadership and said Health Secretary Matt Hancock "should of been fired for 15/20 various things including lying."

Greg Clark asked him to clarify this claim to which he said: "There are numerous examples. He said everyone who needed treatment had had it and he knew that was a lie.

"In mid-April just before the PM and I were diagnosed with coronavirus ourselves he said PPE was covered. When I came back the first meeting I had they said we had a shortage."

Matt Hancock is said to have blamed Simon Stevens and Rishi Sunak for this issue. The Cabinet Secretary looked in to this and told Mr Cummings he had lost confidence in the Health Secretary after his false claims.

And when asked about the financial incentives he praised furlough but said the lack of planning was again an issue.

He said "There wasn't any plan for furlough. They had to pull that out of nothing. There should have been a whole plan but like on testing and shielding there was no plan.

"If you go back to the third, the government published a document. We were told there were plans in place and Ben Warner said 'this is a press release where is the plan'.

"'Oh no, we don't have a plan'. This is why I should have gone through it."

Sevenoaks MP Laura Trott who is part of the health committee asked Mr Cummings: " Did anyone mention a pandemic plan or risk register to you before 2020? And in what circumstance?

"I had conversations with various people in office about the risk register in general.

"Also, some national security risk register issues and also in my time in government I had specific meetings with people about the question of bio-terrorism which overlaps with pandemic planning.

"I thought that many of the plans seemed to me to fall very far short of what was actually needed. A lot of things were power points that lacked detail.

"The process around them is not open. There is not a culture of taking to outside experts.

"One thing I did say to the cabinet secretary last summer which I ardently hope is happening - there ought to be a total review of all risk register programmes.

"It should be open by default and only closed by specific things.

"This cabinet spends tens of billions of pounds on security issues but not enough on experts. If this was opened up there is a way that process should be improved."

In the afternoon session, Mr Cummings continued to accuse Mr Hancock of failings over care homes.

He said the Health Secretary promised in March that people would be tested before being discharged into care homes.

But that didn't happen.

"The protective shield was complete nonsense. Quite apart from putting a shield around them we sent people back to care homes."

The meeting moved on to communications which he says was not as bad as many claimed.

Mr Cummings said: "One of the great myths about the whole thing is the reason for these problems was bad comms. Fundamentally the problem was bad policy, bad decisions and bad planning.

"The autumn disasters were the consequence of bad decisions and bad management."

Mr Cummings was at the centre of a row after it emerged that he had possibly broken the regulations on movement during the first lockdown, when he famously drove to his family home in Durham during the peak of the first wave.

When asked about this incident, Mr Cummings revealed he had been under a security threat with a group of people threatening to kill him and his family.

He said: "When the story came out the Prime Minister and I agreed because of the security issue we would stonewall it. I knew talking about things would cause more problem we thought 'the media stories are wrong let's just ignore it.'

"On Monday he was under so much pressure we should talk about it.

"I should have called my wife and said you and our boy are going to have to get out of London again I'm going to have to explain the truth. Instead of that we had a chaotic situation and I said I'm not saying anymore.

"It was a complete disaster and it undermined public confidence. If I'd just sent my family back out of London and said here's the truth people would have accepted that.

"We took the decision because of the security problem and I felt guilty but fundamentally it was a mistake.

"The default on everything should be openess. If we defaulted to that on this it would have been harder for me but better for the country."

When asked why he didn't apologise, he said he thought it was the right thing to do but only half of it was telling the truth.

He said: "The reality is I had the problems after too. It's true I moved my wife and child back out of London in discussion with the police but I did not leave London"

"I had all of these problems again anyway and that's why it would have been better to tell the truth.

"All I can say is, after the complete debarcle it didn't seem like coming out and explaining it all was a sensible thing to do. When I left I didn't want to draw attention to it again.

"I've had to move my family out before all this but today is the day to get the whole story out so we know the reality."

When asked about his eye sight story he said: "It seemed to me if you're going to drive 300 miles to work the next day, driving 30 miles a road down the road didn't seem that big of a deal when I was on my death bed the day before.

"It didn't feel crazy at the time but I can understand why people thought it was weird. I wish I'd never heard of Barnard Castle and I wish I'd never been."

Once it was clear the Prime Minister wasn't prepared to hold the line I should have moved them out. But we ended up doing the worst thing possible."

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