Complaint letter Carrie Symonds wanted to send about Dilyn the dog story

Boris Johnson refused to back fiancee Carrie Symonds‘ complaint to The Times after it claimed the couple wanted to get rid of their pet dog Dilyn.

He objected on the basis that the proposed complaint, drawn up at the start of the Covid crisis, was ‘a nonsense’.

A copy of the draft letter was leaked to the Daily Mail’s Simon Walters after Dominic Cummings told MPs on Wednesday that Ms Symonds went ‘completely crackers’ over a report claiming the couple hated Dilyn.

Mr Johnson’s former chief adviser Mr Cummings said Ms Symonds’ reaction had diverted the Prime Minister’s attention at a crucial stage ahead of the first lockdown. 

He was also dealing with a demand by Donald Trump for Britain to back bombing raids in the Middle East.

The leaked letter shows Ms Symonds wanted Mr Johnson to support her formal protest that Jack Russell cross Dilyn was not ‘chronically ill’ and there were no plans to ‘callously rehome’ him. 

The draft letter, in both their names, was prepared after Ms Symonds was enraged by an article in The Times on March 11 last year. 

It was addressed to The Times and in it, the couple threatened to take their complaint to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO).

The article said Dilyn could be put up for adoption because the couple were fed up with trying to house train the ‘sickly animal’.

Ms Symonds denounced the story as ‘total crap’ on social media. And when The Times refused to print an apology, she urged Mr Johnson to write to it.

But after reportedly telling Ms Symonds he would send the letter, Mr Johnson changed his mind after Mr Cummings intervened, according to well-placed sources.

‘The PM went along with it initially because Carrie was very cross,’ said an insider. ‘It was none of Dom’s business but he hated Carrie and went berserk. 

He told the PM it was a waste of time – and the PM agreed. He sympathised with Carrie’s feelings but said, ‘I can’t sign this – it’s a nonsense’.’

Mr Johnson’s decision to not complain came after Mr Cummings was told he could not attend a Covid meeting because he was dealing with the Dilyn row.

Eight months later, Mr Cummings was ousted from his No10 post when he lost a power struggle with Ms Symonds.

In his evidence on Wednesday, Mr Cummings said: ‘The Prime Minister’s girlfriend was going completely crackers about this story. Part of the building was saying ‘Are we going to bomb Iraq?’ 

‘Part of the building was arguing whether or not we’re going to do or not do quarantine. 

‘The Prime Minister has got his girlfriend going crackers about something completely trivial.’ 

He also accused Ms Symonds of intervening in a key No10 appointment in a way that was ‘not only completely unethical but also clearly illegal’.

According to a well-placed No10 source, there was another reason Mr Johnson did not complain about the report. ‘It was essentially true,’ said the source. 

‘At one stage there was talk of getting rid of Dilyn. Carrie loves the dog but Boris has never been a fan. It drove him round the bend.’

Downing Street declined to comment last night.

In an extraordinary seven-hour performance on Wednesday, Mr Cummings launched attacks on Mr Johnson, his fiancée Carrie Symonds and Mr Hancock over their personal conduct during the crisis. 

Mr Cummings claimed the Prime Minister was ‘unfit for the job’ and could not lead Britain out of the pandemic.

He said the Health Secretary ‘should have been fired for at least 15 to 20 things, including lying’. 

He alleged Mr Hancock had lied to the PM over the disastrous policy of not testing older people for Covid before they were discharged from hospital into care homes. 

The former No10 aide outlined a series of failings by him and the ‘smoking ruin’ Department for Health, including lying in January last year that pandemic preparations were brilliant when they were ‘completely hollow’.

Mr Cummings alleged Mr Hancock lied about testing hospital patients for coronavirus before they were sent back into care homes, in a suggestion that thousands died because of his dishonesty. 

He also claimed that the Health Secretary lied about people getting the treatment they needed during the first peak last March and April – adding that ‘many people were left to die in horrific circumstances’.

Mr Cummings then accused Mr Hancock of ‘appalling’ behaviour towards chief medical officer Chris Whitty and chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance, saying: ‘He used the whole ‘we’re following the science’ as a way so that he could always say, ‘well if things go wrong, we’ll blame the scientists and it’s not my fault’.’ 

Downing Street has not denied that Mr Johnson considered sacking the Health Secretary in April last year but insisted the Prime Minister has confidence in him now. Mr Hancock disputes the allegations.

Mr Cummings suggested that Mr Johnson chose not to fire the Health Secretary at that point because he was allegedly told ‘you should keep him there because he’s the person you fire when the inquiry comes along’.  

Mr Cummings told the joint health and science committee: ‘One thing I can say completely honestly is that I said repeatedly from February/March that if we don’t fire the Secretary of State and get testing into somebody else’s hands, we’re going to kill people and it’s going to be a catastrophe.’ 

On the claim that Mr Hancock lied, Mr Cummings said: ‘There are numerous examples. In the summer he said that everybody who needed treatment got the treatment they required. 

‘He knew that that was a lie because he had been briefed by the chief scientific adviser and the chief medical officer himself about the first peak. We were told explicitly people did not get the treatment they deserved, many people were left to die in horrific circumstances.’ 

Mr Hancock had also blamed NHS chief Sir Simon Stevens and Chancellor Rishi Sunak for PPE problems.

Mr Cummings said he asked the cabinet secretary to investigate, who came back and said ‘it is completely untrue, I have lost confidence in the Secretary of State’s honesty in these meetings’.

The former aide said Mr Hancock’s public promise to deliver 100,000 tests a day by the end of April was ‘incredibly stupid’ because it was already an internal goal.

‘In my opinion he should’ve been fired for that thing alone, and that itself meant the whole of April was hugely disrupted by different parts of Whitehall fundamentally trying to operate in different ways completely because Hancock wanted to be able to go on TV and say ‘look at me and my 100k target’.

‘It was criminal, disgraceful behaviour that caused serious harm.’ 

On a visit to Colchester hospital yesterday, Mr Johnson said the government faced an ‘incredibly difficult series of decisions, none of which we have taken lightly’ and ‘at every stage we have been governed by a determination to protect life’. 

Challenged whether the government’s failures had cost tens of thousands of lives as Mr Cummings claims, he said: ‘No I don’t think so. But, of course, this has been an incredibly difficult series of decisions, none of which we’ve taken lightly.’ 

He said the situation in care homes – where more than 40,000 deaths were linked to Covid – was ‘tragic’, but added: ‘We did everything we could to protect the NHS and to protect care homes as well.’

He said: ‘I think it’s important for us to focus on what really matters to the people of this country.

‘I think, if I may say so, that some of the commentary I have heard doesn’t bear any relation to reality.

‘What people want us to get on with is delivering the road map and trying – cautiously – to take our country forward through what has been one of the most difficult periods that I think anybody can remember.’ 

Summoned to answer an urgent question in the House yesterday morning, Mr Hancock said: ‘These unsubstantiated allegations around honesty are not true. 

‘I have been straight with people in public and in private throughout.’ 

Mr Hancock also dismissed Mr Cummings’ criticism of his testing target, saying it was ‘how you get stuff done in government’.

‘I am proud of everyone in my department,’ he said. 

In a brutal swipe at the ex-No10 chief, who was ousted from Downing Street in November, he said people can see that over the past six months ‘governing has become a little easier and we have been able to deliver’. 

Tory MPs rallied round Mr Hancock in the chamber, with William Wragg slamming the ‘irony’ of criticism from Mr Cummings, and Peter Bone dismissing him as an ‘unelected Spad who broke Covid regulations’. Mr Bone said the premier’s mistake was that he ‘didn’t fire Dominic Cummings early enough’.  

Red Wall MP Dehenna Davison also made her feelings clear as she asked a question by video link with a ‘Barnard Castle eye test’ chart in the background.   

Government sources have called the onslaught from Mr Cummings a ‘character assassination’ that was ‘not backed by evidence’.

Senior Tories told MailOnline that the former No10 chief was engaged in epic ‘score settling’ and had a ‘selective memory’. ‘He should really have words with whoever was in charge last year,’ one said wryly. 

Freedom Day on a knife edge: Just 3% of Brits infected with the Indian Covid variant were fully vaccinated but the boffins are still counselling caution 

Just three per cent of Brits infected with the Indian Covid variant were fully vaccinated, according to official data that bolsters hopes ‘Freedom Day’ can still go ahead next month – despite calls for No10 to delay the next step of lockdown-easing on June 21 over fears the mutant strain could cause hospitals to be crippled once again.

Public Health England analysis shows only 177 out of 5,599 people who caught the mutant strain and presented to A&E had already had both jabs. Almost 3,400 had not yet had their first dose.

Top scientists called the findings ‘incredibly reassuring’. Professor Paul Hunter, an infectious disease expert at the University of East Anglia, said: ‘It shows we’ve got the tools to end this.’

Other promising data showing the success of the jab blitz shows the average age of people testing positive is now just 29, the youngest ever recorded and down from 41 at the start of the year. If the trend stays the same, Professor Hunter said Britain ‘should be able to manage the third wave without too much pressure on the NHS and without re-imposition of lockdown’.

But plans to go ahead with ‘Freedom Day’ on June 21 hang in the balance because of the rapid spread of the Indian variant, with cautious scientists calling for ministers to delay the final step on the roadmap back to normality. 

The fast-spreading B.1.617.2 strain is now behind up to three quarters of all cases in the UK, and has been found in more than 250 of England’s 300-plus authorities. 

Professor Christina Pagel, a mathematician from University College London and a member of Independent Sage, said the Indian variant was causing concern and the road map should be delayed by two months to allow millions more to be fully vaccinated. 

Meanwhile, one of No10’s advisers also called for caution until more of the population has had both jabs. Professor Andrew Hayward, who is on the Nervtag panel, argued working from home could cut transmission ‘without having any economic impact’. 

Boris Johnson yesterday admitted he might delay the end of lockdown, prompting business leaders, hospitality chiefs and senior MPs to urge the PM to stick to his Covid roadmap. They begged him not to ‘steal our summer’ because delaying the full lifting would be ‘devastating’ for the economy. 

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng today insisted it was ‘impossible’ to know how the situation would unfold over the next fortnight. He said ‘there’s nothing in the data that suggests we should move the day’ but refused to rule out local lockdowns and keeping businesses closed in Indian variants hotspots such as Bolton.

Ministers are quietly confident they can press ahead with the route back to normality, given that Britain’s vaccine drive has severed the once impenetrable link between cases and hospitalisations. More than 38million adults have already had one dose, and 24million have had both.

One of the senior officials behind Bolton’s inoculation drive said jabs ‘definitely seem to be working’. Admission rates have crept up over the past month in line with soaring infections, with 49 beds now occupied by coronavirus patients – up from 15 at the start of May. But Dr Helen Wall told BBC Radio 4 they were not as sick as patients they treated in the first or second wave and only five were fully vaccinated. 

But No10 is waiting for key data to show just how more transmissible the Indian variant is to give a clearer picture about how much pressure the NHS may come under in the next few months. 

If it proves to spread 50 per cent easier than the Kent strain, which triggered the UK’s second wave, then hospitals could once again face huge pressure, experts fear. Vaccines aren’t perfect and haven’t completely broken the link to severe illness, meaning the more people infected, the more people who will need care.   

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘Certainly we have weakened the link significantly between cases and hospitalisations, but we haven’t broken it.

‘We now have fewer restrictions in England than we’ve had since the pandemic started, so if enough people get infected, even a really small proportion who need hospital can still end up being quite large absolute numbers.’

Asked if it would be ‘very demoralising’ to remain as we are now, she said: ‘I think what’s demoralising is having a third wave. If we can just delay international travel, delay stage four of the road map until we have a much higher proportion of people vaccinated with two doses, we’re in a much, much better position. 

‘We’re only two months away from that, it’s not long to wait. What I don’t want is for us to have new restrictions.’

Professor Andrew Hayward, from University College London and a member of New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), said people who have only had one dose of the vaccine could end up in hospital, even if they were young.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘On top of that, we are seeing a doubling of cases (of the Indian variant) every week, and at a very minimum estimate it’s about 7,000 cases last week, it only takes five or six doublings for that to get up to say a quarter-million cases, and then you could set the pressure on the NHS and avoidable illnesses.’

He said when further restrictions were lifted ‘instead of doubling every week it’s likely to double more frequently than that of course, so I think there is a good argument for caution until such time as we’ve got a much higher proportion of the population double vaccinated’.

Professor Hayward added: ‘It is a trade off, it’s a difficult trade off to make and it’s up to our politicians to make that trade off.

‘There are some baseline measures that can remain in place without drastically affecting the economy.

‘A lot of people can relatively easily work from home without it affecting their productivity and having a huge economic impact, and that would substantially reduce the amount of transmission.’ 

Cummings ‘smoking gun’: Former aide ‘has documents showing that Matt Hancock was summoned by PM to be asked if had misled No 10 and whether Health Minister’s NEGLIGENCE killed people in care homes’ 

Matt Hancock is facing fresh pressure today amid claims Dominic Cummings has documents showing the PM feared he had been ‘misled’ over Covid testing for care homes at the height of the pandemic. 

The Health Secretary has been desperately trying to fend off allegations from Dominic Cummings that he ‘lied’ to Boris Johnson in March last year about whether residents would be screened on leaving hospital. 

After days of dodging, Mr Hancock finally addressed the issue directly last night, insisting his ‘recollection’ was he had only promised to ‘build testing capacity’ so that the checks could be carried out. 

But there are reports today that Mr Cummings has a document from May last year indicating alarm in Downing Street that Mr Hancock’s ‘negligence’ had ‘killed people in care homes’. 

No10 officials asked for information from the Department of Health to understand what had gone wrong, according to ITV News. 

The latest claims will heap further pressure on Mr Hancock, despite the PM trying to shore him up overnight by issuing a statement saying he had ‘full confidence’ in his senior minister.    

Pressed at a Downing Street press briefing last night over whether he had told Mr Johnson and others in government early in the pandemic that checks on discharge would happen, Mr Hancock said: ‘My recollection of events is that I committed to delivering that testing for people going from hospital into care homes when we could do it.’

But he insisted ‘it wasn’t possible’ to carry out the testing until the capacity had been built – something Labour has cast doubt on saying that hundreds of thousands of tests had already been carried out in the UK by mid-April. 

He also tried to bat away questions by suggesting they are best considered in the public inquiry, which will not begin until next year. ‘There will be a time when we can go into this in detail,’ he said. 

Earlier, Mr Hancock told the Commons that Mr Cummings’ barrage of allegations – including that he lied repeatedly, failed care home residents and should have been ‘sacked daily’ – were ‘not true’ and he had been ‘straight with people’.  

Mr Cummings said Mr Hancock ‘categorically’ told colleagues in March that people would be tested before being returned to homes.

But the former aide said they ‘subsequently found out that that hadn’t happened’. 

According to ITV, Mr Cummings has documents showing the PM’s office summoned Mr Hancock to No10 on May 3 last year, for a meeting the following day, to explain whether he had misled the chief aide, the PM and then Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill on the testing of patients before discharge into care homes, as well as about further testing of residents and staff.

The DoH said it ‘did not recognise’ the claim and Mr Hancock ‘had many meetings with the PM across a range of issues’. 

Mr Hancock was asked yesterday if he could say he protected care homes, and was also pressed if he made the commitment on testing.

He replied: ‘We worked as hard as we could to protect people who live in care homes, and of course those who live in care homes are some of the most vulnerable to this disease because by its nature it attacks and has more of an impact on older people.

‘Now when it comes to the testing of people as they left hospital and went into care homes, we committed to building the testing capacity to allow that to happen.

‘Of course it then takes time to build testing capacity.

‘In fact, one of the critical things we did was set the 100,000 target back then to make sure we built that testing capacity and it was very effective in doing so.

‘And then we were able to introduce the policy of testing everybody before going into care homes, but we could only do that once we had the testing capacity which I had to build, because we didn’t have it in this country from the start.

‘We started with a capacity of less than 2,000 in March last year and got to 100,000 tests a day.

‘And we set all of this out at the time in public documents. It’s all a matter of public record.’

On a visit to Colchester hospital yesterday, Mr Johnson said the government faced an ‘incredibly difficult series of decisions, none of which we have taken lightly’ and ‘at every stage we have been governed by a determination to protect life’. 

Challenged whether the government’s failures had cost tens of thousands of lives as Mr Cummings claims, he said: ‘No I don’t think so. But, of course, this has been an incredibly difficult series of decisions, none of which we’ve taken lightly.’ 

He said the situation in care homes – where more than 40,000 deaths were linked to Covid – was ‘tragic’, but added: ‘We did everything we could to protect the NHS and to protect care homes as well.’

He said: ‘I think it’s important for us to focus on what really matters to the people of this country.

‘I think, if I may say so, that some of the commentary I have heard doesn’t bear any relation to reality.

‘What people want us to get on with is delivering the road map and trying – cautiously – to take our country forward through what has been one of the most difficult periods that I think anybody can remember.’ 

Summoned to answer an urgent question in the House yesterday morning, Mr Hancock said: ‘These unsubstantiated allegations around honesty are not true. 

‘I have been straight with people in public and in private throughout.’ 

Mr Hancock also dismissed Mr Cummings’ criticism of his testing target, saying it was ‘how you get stuff done in government’.

‘I am proud of everyone in my department,’ he said. 

In a brutal swipe at the ex-No10 chief, who was ousted from Downing Street in November, he said people can see that over the past six months ‘governing has become a little easier and we have been able to deliver’. 

Tory MPs rallied round Mr Hancock in the chamber, with William Wragg slamming the ‘irony’ of criticism from Mr Cummings, and Peter Bone dismissing him as an ‘unelected Spad who broke Covid regulations’. Mr Bone said the premier’s mistake was that he ‘didn’t fire Dominic Cummings early enough’.  

Red Wall MP Dehenna Davison also made her feelings clear as she asked a question by video link with a ‘Barnard Castle eye test’ chart in the background.   

Government sources have called the onslaught from Mr Cummings a ‘character assassination’ that was ‘not backed by evidence’.

Senior Tories told MailOnline that the former No10 chief was engaged in epic ‘score settling’ and had a ‘selective memory’. ‘He should really have words with whoever was in charge last year,’ one said wryly. 

Mr Hancock told the Commons yesterday: ‘Every day since I began working on the response to this pandemic last January, I’ve got up each morning and asked: ‘What must I do to protect life?’

‘That is the job of the Health Secretary in a pandemic.

‘We’ve taken an approach of openness, transparency and explanation of both what we know and of what we don’t know.’

He said he had updated the House 60 times during pandemic, and ‘answered questions from colleagues, the media and the public’.

Launching a dramatic bid to bring down the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary on Wednesday, Mr Cummings blamed a toxic mix of complacency and indecision for the needless deaths.

He told MPs that senior ministers and advisers, including himself, had fallen ‘disastrously short’, adding: ‘When the public needed us most, the Government failed. Tens of thousands of people died, who didn’t need to die.’

In an extraordinary seven-hour performance, Mr Cummings launched attacks on Mr Johnson, his fiancée Carrie Symonds and Mr Hancock over their personal conduct during the crisis. 

Mr Cummings claimed the Prime Minister was ‘unfit for the job’ and could not lead Britain out of the pandemic.

He said the Health Secretary ‘should have been fired for at least 15 to 20 things, including lying’. 

He alleged Mr Hancock had lied to the PM over the disastrous policy of not testing older people for Covid before they were discharged from hospital into care homes. 

The former No10 aide outlined a series of failings by him and the ‘smoking ruin’ Department for Health, including lying in January last year that pandemic preparations were brilliant when they were ‘completely hollow’.