Ex-chief adviser to PM says 2020 Festival decision was ‘bizarre’

» THE Prime Minister’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings told MPS that it was “bizarre” to let the Cheltenham Festival go ahead last year.

Mr Cummings was making an appearance before MPS yesterday.

During the hearing, Jeremy Hunt – chair of the health and social care committee – said to Cummings: “So, just to be clear, that was two weeks before the Champions League event in Liverpool and the Cheltenham Gold Cup and you didn’t, at that point, advise that those massive participation sport events should be cancelled.”

Mr Cummings replied: “Our official advice at the time was – and it shows the kind of logic at play – doing that won’t make much difference for transmission, which seems obviously bizarre in retrospect, that the idea that we would keep having mass events going on through this whole thing.

“But also, secondly, it could be actively bad because you would just push people into pubs.

“And of course no one in the kind of official system in the Department of Health drew the obvious, logical conclusion which was ‘shouldn’t we be shutting all the pubs as well?’”

Mr Hunt then asked: “Six weeks after our first case, six weeks after the World Health Organisation had raised the alarm, you didn’t advise him [Boris Johnson] to cancel the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the Champions League matches, to lock down the borders – the things that could have prevented a lockdown.”

Mr Hunt added: “Do you not recognise that was a massive failure on your part as his chief adviser, that you took so long to come to him with advice to change tack?”

To which Mr Cummings answered: “There is no doubt in retrospect that it was a huge failure of mine. I bitterly regret that I didn’t hit the emergency panic button earlier than I did.”