Matt Hancock faces mounting pressure over his failure to protect care homes from Covid-19 - amid new claims he was summoned to explain himself to Boris Johnson.
It's claimed Downing Street demanded the Health Secretary's presence last May to explain why elderly patients had been discharged from hospital into care homes without being tested.
Dominic Cummings is said to have documents about the meeting on May 4, according to ITV's Robert Peston.
It is claimed Mr Hancock was asked to explain if he misled the PM, Mr Cummings and then cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill.
A source told Mr Peston there was a fear in Downing Street that Mr Hancock’s “negligence” had “killed people in care homes”.
Sources close to the Health Secretary dismissed the ITV report, saying they did not recognise the claims "at all".
But they refused to be drawn on whether the meeting took place, adding: "The Health Secretary has had many meetings with the PM across a range of issues throughout the pandemic as you would expect."
It comes after Mr Cummings made explosive allegations that Mr Hancock repeatedly lied during the pandemic - including on a crucial promise to ensure people were tested before being discharged to care homes.
A newly-published Public Health England report has linked 286 care home deaths to 97 Covid outbreaks that were “seeded” by residents arriving from hospital.
The vast majority happened between mid-March and mid-April, when hospital patients were not routinely being tested before going into care homes.
According to Mr Cummings, Mr Hancock had assured Boris Johnson in March that hospital patients would be tested before they were discharged into care.
Mr Hancock last night admitted he made the promise - but insisted he didn't promise the testing straight away, only "when we could do it".
That, in turn, has left questions about why he allowed hospital patients to be discharged to care homes anyway.
Families face fresh anguish today over the damning figures - which appear to be the first time officials have counted deaths linked to the disastrous policy last year.
Mr Hancock said last May: "Right from the start we've tried to throw a protective ring around our care homes."
But Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng today mounted a limp defence of the Government’s record, saying: “They were protected as far as we could.”
Dr Jenny Harries, the recently-promoted chief executive of UK Health Security Agency, tried to spin the new study as good news, saying it showed “discharge from hospitals was actually a very, very tiny proportional cause of cases” - 1.6% of all care home outbreaks.
But Nadra Ahmed of the National Care Association said claims of a “protective shield” were “absolute rubbish”.
She said: “We put social care on the altar to be slaughtered while we worked on the mantra that the NHS must be protected."
Sam Monaghan, chief executive of care home charity MHA, told Times Radio: “There's no way that you can take people into care homes who aren't tested.
“Its is like putting kind of a live explosive into a box of tinder."
She added: "That just highlights that there was no support, and that we were abandoned as a sector during that first wave.”
