Analysis: Hancock’s speech was aimed at rebutting Cummings
By Tom Rayner, digital politics editor
On the face of it, Matt Hancock’s speech in Oxford was about celebrating the success of the UK’s vaccination programme ahead of a meeting of G7 health ministers. But while international diplomats, journalists and leading scientists were in the physical audience at the Jenner Institute, another unmentioned figure loomed large.
Repeatedly the health secretary appeared to use his half-hour speech to rebut aspects of the explosive testimony Dominic Cummings gave to the science and health select committees last week. It seemed at times like a dry run ahead of Mr Hancock’s own appearance in front of that same joint committee next Thursday.
Early in the speech, Mr Hancock described how he “vividly remembered” his very first meeting to discuss the need to commit all the resources possible to the development of a coronavirus vaccine.
It was, he said, in January 2020 – long before even the first case of the virus had been…
