{"id":126667,"date":"2021-05-28T08:04:35","date_gmt":"2021-05-28T08:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/?p=126667"},"modified":"2021-05-28T08:04:35","modified_gmt":"2021-05-28T08:04:35","slug":"grant-shapps-labels-cummings-evidence-to-mps-a-sideshow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/world-news\/grant-shapps-labels-cummings-evidence-to-mps-a-sideshow\/","title":{"rendered":"Grant Shapps labels Cummings&apos; evidence to MPs a &apos;sideshow&apos;"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Grant Shapps brands Dominic Cummings&#8217; bombshell evidence to MPs a &#8216;sideshow&#8217; and claims the PM&#8217;s former top aide has an &#8216;agenda&#8217; as the Government tries to spike his guns<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Grant Shapps today labelled Dominic Cummings&#8217; evidence to MPs a &#8216;sideshow&#8217;<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>The Transport Secretary claimed the PM&#8217;s former top aide has an &#8216;agenda&#8217;\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Meanwhile, Government sources moved to try to spike Mr Cummings&#8217; guns\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Grant Shapps today labelled Dominic Cummings&#8217; bombshell evidence to MPs about the Government&#8217;s response to the coronavirus pandemic a &#8216;sideshow&#8217;.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Transport Secretary accused Mr Cummings of having an &#8216;agenda&#8217; as he appeared to question whether the PM&#8217;s former top aide is a &#8216;reliable&#8217; witness.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Number 10 is braced for a damaging onslaught from the Vote Leave maverick as he addresses a joint session of the health and science select committees.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Government sources moved overnight to try to spike Mr Cummings&#8217; guns as they took on his central claim that pursuing &#8216;herd immunity&#8217; was the initial strategy for responding to the crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2021\/05\/26\/09\/43458229-9620217-image-a-45_1622016985815.jpg\" height=\"357\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Grant Shapps today labelled Dominic Cummings&#8217; bombshell evidence to MPs about the Government&#8217;s response to the coronavirus pandemic a &#8216;sideshow&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2021\/05\/26\/09\/43458235-9620217-image-a-46_1622016995860.jpg\" height=\"423\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>The Transport Secretary accused Mr Cummings of having an &#8216;agenda&#8217; as he appeared to question whether the PM&#8217;s former top aide is a &#8216;reliable&#8217; witness<\/p>\n<p>Mr Cummings has said &#8216;herd immunity&#8217; was the &#8216;Plan A&#8217; and the Government has &#8216;lied&#8217; when it has repeatedly denied that was the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>However, Politico said it had been shown WhatsApp messages from last March which\u00a0apparently torpedo the claims.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Politico said the messages showed that Mr Cummings had privately ordered Cabinet ministers to deny &#8216;herd immunity&#8217; was ever official policy.<\/p>\n<p>He reportedly told ministers they should argue that achieving &#8216;herd immunity&#8217; was simply a secondary long-term effect of the Government&#8217;s original &#8216;mitigation&#8217; strategy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Mr Cummings is expected to use his evidence session with MPs to step up his criticism of Boris Johnson&#8217;s response to the crisis after he used a lengthy Twitter thread to make a raft of initial accusations.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But Mr Shapps told Sky News:\u00a0&#8216;I&#8217;ll leave others to determine how reliable a witness to all this he is.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;He was there at the time, what his motives would be I will leave to others.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;As I say, I think what most people are interested in in when are they getting their second vaccine, if they haven&#8217;t had it already, or when are they getting their first one if they are younger.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Good news on that is that we are coming down to 30 year plus this week actually.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;So we are getting through the population of Britain, getting down through the age groups and I think that is what will be focusing most people&#8217;s attention this week rather than a side show over a former adviser who has his own agenda, presumably.&#8217;\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Transport Secretary\u00a0acknowledged mistakes were made in the response to the pandemic but said the Government was responding to an unprecedented situation.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;There was no rulebook and of course there have been mistakes made,&#8217; he said.<\/p>\n<p>He claimed that Mr Cummings &#8216;has probably tweeted most of what he&#8217;s going to say already&#8217; ahead of his appearance before MPs.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Shapps added: &#8216;We were making decisions under an unprecedented situation, there&#8217;s no rulebook, there&#8217;s no textbook to open and see how to deal with a pandemic, the last time the world faced anything like this was 100 years ago with Spanish flu.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;It&#8217;s easy to be professors of hindsight.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>On the &#8216;very big calls&#8217; like the vaccine programme and developing mass testing, Mr Shapps said &#8216;we got it right&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Asked whether Mr Cummings was a &#8216;trusted adviser&#8217; to the PM, Mr Shapps said: &#8216;He was certainly an adviser of the Government. It&#8217;s for others to decide the trusted part of it.&#8217;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-9620217\/Grant-Shapps-labels-Cummings-evidence-MPs-sideshow.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Grant Shapps brands Dominic Cummings&#8217; bombshell evidence<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":126666,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23056],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Grant Shapps labels Cummings&amp;apos; evidence to MPs a &amp;apos;sideshow&amp;apos; - Pre Coin News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/world-news\/grant-shapps-labels-cummings-evidence-to-mps-a-sideshow\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Grant Shapps labels Cummings&amp;apos; 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