London, Thanasis Gavos

Lavros against the government officials who were responsible for handling the coronavirus pandemic in Britain appeared once again the former chief adviser to the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings.

The controversial former chief of staff in the British Prime Minister’s Office is testifying at the ongoing public inquiry into the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The current phase of the investigation concerns the actions of the Johnson administration. In the previous months, the degree of preparedness of the competent authorities was examined.

At first Mr. Cummings said that decisions were largely made outside the cabinetspeaking of a disproportionate influence and determination of decisions by the Office of the Council of Ministers, which coordinates the work of the ministries.

He attributed the many wrong decisions to the “fundamentally dysfunctional structure” of the government apparatus, which was exacerbated by the fact that, in his view, there were many people in the wrong positions, both in the Cabinet Office (which he described as a “bombed landscape”) and in the co-authors ministries.

As for the head of that dysfunctional structure, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Mr Cummings repeated the label “supermarket basket”, a nickname he claimed everyone in Downing Street used for Mr Johnson because of the ease with which he changed direction in decisions of.

He spoke of an “extremely chaotic” atmosphere in the governmentfor inadequacy and inability to deal with the scale of the threat in the Cabinet Office, as well as for a troubled Ministry of Health.

He also estimated that Downing Street “apparently” did not sufficiently understand the recommendations of the SAGE scientific committee that provided updates on the course of the pandemic, often due to misinterpreted versions presented by the Cabinet Office.

He also accused the Office of the Council of Ministers of initially preventing the creation of protective fences for more vulnerable categories of citizens. “The whole issue has been almost abhorrently ignored by the entire planning system. In essence there was no such plan,” Mr Cummings said.

He also noted that before he began to raise objections in mid-March 2020, the government had a “fatalist” view that the coronavirus would invade the country without real coping skills and without anyone considering that a lockdown was a realistic option.

More generally presented a picture of a government machinery inadequate in structure and capacity, with him trying to direct the indecisive and for a time unconvinced prime minister of the magnitude of the crisis.

Earlier, Downing Street’s head of communications during the pandemic Lee Kane had said in his own deposition that contrary to initial assurances, there was no adequate plan to deal with such a pandemic.

He had also criticized Boris Johnson for “indecisiveness” and a “lack of leadership” that was causing “chaos” in the government apparatus.

Messages Mr Kane had also exchanged with other officials and excerpts from other documents show the then prime minister agreeing with his MPs’ view that the coronavirus should be left to affect the elderly and the focus should be on protecting the young and economy..

The mission of the investigation is not to assign criminal responsibility but to draw conclusions to avoid the same mistakes in a future pandemic.

The process will be completed in 2026, but there will be interim reports with conclusions and recommendations.