Dominic Cummings: health department a 'smoking ruin' when Covid hit – video

Boris Johnson's former chief adviser Dominic Cummings has called for an urgent investigation into the government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic and described the Department of Health and Social Care as a 'smoking ruin' when the crisis struck.

Cummings said he, the cabinet secretary, the chief scientific adviser and some others had said that 'obviously we should take this out of the Department of Health, obviously we should create a separate taskforce and obviously we have to empower that taskforce directly with the authority of the prime minister'

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