The Tory government's billions in Covid contracts were an "absolute total disaster", Dominic Cummings has declared.
Boris Johnson's former top aide fired a devastating shot today at the scramble to get personal protective equipment (PPE) four months after he walked out of No10 in a bitter civil war.
He branded the Department of Health a "smoking ruin" that couldn't be trusted to buy up prospective vaccines last year.
And appearing to back an inquiry, he said Parliament should have an “urgent, very very hard look into what went wrong and why”.
It is a direct attack on Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, who just weeks ago claimed there was not a shortage of PPE in the first wave of the pandemic.
Mr Cummings told MPs on the Science and Technology Committee: "I and others said repeatedly before 2020 this system is an expensive disaster zone and when it hits a crisis it will completely fall over. That system hit a crisis, and it completely fell over.”
He added the Department of Health "had an absolute disaster in terms of buying - how it buys, procures, how it deals with science and technology. It's why we had to take the vaccines process out of the Department of Health".
Mr Cummings said Chief Scientific Advisor Sir Patrick Vallance suggested setting up a separate task force to procure vaccines, which was overseen by biotech venture capitalist Kate Bingham, who is married to Tory MP Jesse Norman.
“To do that we had to take it out of the Department of Health", he said, and “strip away all the normal nonsense”.
In a brutal attack on Health Secretary Matt Hancock, Mr Cummings added: “In Spring 2020 you had a situation where the Department for Health was just a smoking ruin in terms of procurement and PPE and all of that.”
Yet despite a furious row about contracts handed to Tory cronies, Mr Cummings claimed there should have been fewer checks and balances - not more.
He cited the Manhattan Project, behind the first nuclear bomb, in which US General Leslie Groves “ran around the country handing out something like 2% of US GDP, often with only a handshake”.
And he attacked the UK's procurement system as "created by the EU framework". He also said it was clear early on that the EU's now-disaster-hit vaccine scheme "looked like an absolute guaranteed programme to fail, debacle”.
It came as the aide revealed Boris Johnson hired him in a private summit in Mr Cummings' Islington living room where he told him to change the “disaster zone” of Whitehall.
Mr Cummings described the extraordinary cosy details of how he was installed at the heart of government, four months after his acrimonious walkout from a No10 civil war.
The ex-£140,000-a-year aide also admitted the government had been “swamped by the Brexit problem”, which he said the PM branded a “huge nightmare”.
The desire to radically change the civil service had previously been seen as Mr Cummings’ own project, rather than direct orders from the Prime Minister.
But in his first public appearance since walking out, Mr Cummings said he told Boris Johnson he would only come to No10 if he could change the “disaster zone” of Whitehall - and Mr Johnson replied: “Deal”.
He told the Science and Technology Committee: “Essentially what happened is the Prime Minister came to speak to me the Sunday before he became Prime Minister.
“He said ‘will I come to Downing Street to try and help sort out the huge Brexit nightmare’.
“I said ‘yes, if first of all you’re deadly serious about actually getting Brexit done and avoiding a second referendum. Secondly, double the science budget. Third, create some ARPA-like entity. Fourth, support me in trying to change how Whitehall works and the Cabinet Office work because it’s a disaster zone.’
“And he said ‘deal’.”
Meanwhile it emerged Mr Cummings has agreed to give bombshell evidence on his part in the response to Covid last year.
A date has not yet been set for the session before a joint committee of MPs - which could probe more details of Mr Cummings’ lockdown-breaking trip to Durham and his ill-fated visit to Barnard Castle to “test his eyesight”.
Boris Johnson's Press Secretary Allegra Stratton said: “Dominic Cummings was a valued member of the Prime Minister’s staff. He was the Chief of Staff - he was an enormously important player in the PM’s team and what he chooses to do is his business out of government.”
Asked if Boris Johnson said the things attributed to him in Cummings' living room, the PM's spokesman said: “I’m obviously not going to comment on private conversations between the Prime Minister and a Special Advisor. I obviously wasn’t there.”
Downing Street defended the response of the Department of Health and Social Care to the coronavirus pandemic.
The spokesman added: "Covid challenged health systems around the world. From the outset, it was always our focus to protect the NHS and save lives.
"I would point to what was achieved last year in terms of establishing one of the biggest diagnostic networks in UK history, in terms of increasing the number of tests we are able to undertake every day.
"We have procured over nine million items of PPE, we have established the NHS Test and Trace system which has contacted millions of people and asked them to isolate.
"DH (Department of Health) and the NHS were central to the rollout of the vaccination programme."
