Forced to go to the House of Commons to respond to the claims, Mr Hancock said: “These unsubstantiated allegations around honesty are not true."

"Which claims, Dominic Cummings made yesterday, is he prepared to refute at the despatch box?" Gove was asked. He wouldn't refute any.

There are examples of when “the science didn’t suit” the Government’s aims, it would be “side-stepped”.

"In all fairness if he was at home doing nothing and not touching the NHS he probably was."

He faces being suspended from the Commons for six weeks.

It is one of the weirder Covid conspiracies.

"They’d have been able to catch him if they’d just waited till he ran past his neighbour at the end of the road & had to stop to give them a PPE contract."

“Repeatedly in meeting after meeting I and others said all we have to do is download the Singapore or Taiwan documents in English and impose them here."

Cummings defence seemed to be ‘Not me Guv, I’m thick as a (Barnard) castle wall.’