The Latest Breaking News from the Cabinet Office

The inquiry also saw diary entries showing that Boris Johnson suggested he believed the pandemic was 'nature’s way of dealing with old people'

Dominic Cummings said there was no shielding plan early in the pandemic and vulnerable groups were ‘appallingly neglected’.

The Cabinet Office said the civil service chief would be back ‘in a few weeks’.

Have you been following the Covid inquiry? Away from the front pages, which have mostly been occupied by other stories, revelation after appalling revelation has been spilling out, confirming our very worst fears about what went on in Downing Street as the Covid pandemic hit.

Members of the Spi-B advisory group told the Covid-19 Inquiry they had been raising the ‘problem’ of Government communications for several weeks.

In today’s newsletter: From allegedly lost WhatsApp messages to Sir Patrick Vallance’s frank lockdown diary, revelations only get more intriguing

In a WhatsApp message to Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings described the Cabinet Office as ‘terrifyingly s***’

The Covid inquiry is currently hearing evidence related to the Government’s decisions in the early days of the pandemic.

The former PM was accused of failing to lead the country in the early days of the pandemic, the UK Covid Inquiry was told