AN SNP MP has challenged Dominic Cummings over why 13-year-old school children could understand the need to close international borders, but the Government could not.
Anum Qaisar-Javed, who was elected earlier this month in the Airdrie and Shotts by-election, questioned the former senior advisor during his appearance at a Commons committee today.
The former modern studies teacher explained that prior to her election, she had discussed the pandemic handling from a political perspective with her students at an Edinburgh secondary school.
READ MORE: Dominic Cummings apologises for pandemic handling and says Government failed
She asked if it was a “fair assessment” that “13-year-old weans” from Edinburgh had a better understanding of the reasons for closing borders to international travellers than the Government.
The MP said: “Prior to my election I was a secondary school teacher, I taught modern studies and politics. I specifically remember at a lesson in early January 2020 when the first outbreak happened and we were discussing it in class.
“I was explaining to my pupils that there was an area called Wuhan in China, this is happening there, and linking it to what I teach.
“We spoke about if you were Prime Minister or if you were a government adviser, what steps would you be doing to develop these critical thinking skills.”
She continued: “My 13-year-old weans understood the concept of closing the borders, of stopping people from entering the country.
“If 13-year-old kids could understand that, why... is that a fair assessment then to say that the government... that 13-year-old kids were thinking more about it that the government?”
Mr Cummings replied “Correct, yes”.
He said that there were concerns from government that it could be perceived as racist to stop travellers from certain countries coming to the UK, and in a swipe at the Prime Minister added: “Fundamentally, there was no proper border policy because the Prime Minister never wanted a proper border policy.”
He added: “Repeatedly in meeting after meeting, I and others said ‘All we have to do is download the Singapore or Taiwan documents in English and impose them here.’
“We're imposing all of these restrictions on people domestically, but people can see that everyone's just coming in from these countries. It's madness, it's undermining the whole message that we should take this seriously.
“His basic argument at that point…he was back to ‘Lockdown was all terrible mistake.’”
At an earlier point in the committee, Mr Cummings also told MPs about the Prime Minister being "stupid to pick a fight" with footballer Marcus Rashford over the free school meals fiasco.
Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser claimed that the Prime Minister was told twice by the director of communications not to take on the striker over his campaign to tackle child food poverty.
The Manchester United star’s campaign to extend free school meal vouchers for eligible pupils into the summer holidays, amid the coronavirus pandemic, led to a Government U-turn in June last year.
The Government made a U-turn again in November after Rashford and child poverty campaigners called for free school meals to be provided to disadvantaged children during the Christmas holidays as well.
Pointing to the row, Mr Cummings said: “For example, the whole thing with Rashford, the director of communications said to the Prime Minister twice, ‘do not pick a fight with Rashford. Obviously, we should do this instead’.
“The Prime Minister decided to pick a fight and then surrendered twice.
“After that everyone says ‘oh, your communications is stupid’. No, what’s stupid was picking a fight with Rashford over school meals, and what should have happened is just getting the school meals policy right.
“So it’s easy to blame communications for bad policy and bad decision-making.”
When asked to score the Government from 0 to 10 on its communication with the public and the NHS, Mr Cummings said “one of the great myths” was that all the problems from the pandemic were due to “bad communications”.
He said: “Fundamentally, the reason for all these problems was bad policy, bad decisions, bad planning, bad operational capability.
“It doesn’t matter if you’ve got great people doing communications, if the Prime Minister changes his mind 10 times a day, and then calls up the media and contradicts his own policy day after day after day, you’re going to have a communications disaster zone.”
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