Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Prime Minister, with reference to WhatsApp communications dated 27 April 2020, published by Dominic Cummings on 16 June 2021, whether he held discussions with officials in his Department on 27 April 2020 on his confidence in the competency of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in managing his Department's response to the covid-19 outbreak.

Throughout this pandemic, the whole of Government’s priority has been to save lives, protect the NHS, and support people’s jobs and livelihoods, right across the United Kingdom. We have stood side-by-side with the private sector, procuring enormous volumes of goods and expertise with extreme urgency – often, these were literally matters of life and death. This has delivered:

• The biggest vaccination programme we have ever undertaken.

• The largest diagnostic network in British history – with over 190 million tests conducted.

• A stockpile of over 32 billion items of PPE as a result of a phenomenal cross-government, international purchasing effort.