they believe there is enough to do the remaining under 40s by the 19th ofjuly but we can t start the second doses until after that, and the pfizer vaccine will also be the vaccine that will be used to vaccinate children, if that is given the green light. so that has an implication for when that could start and how quickly that can be done. ministers have always said supply of vaccination is the rate limiting factor and that is clear, that is more true now as we approach the end of the roll out than it has ever been. borisjohnson s former top aide, dominic cummings, has published what he says are messages he received from the prime minister, in which mrjohnson described the health secretary as hopeless . mr cummings has blamed matt hancock forfailings during the pandemic, and said he should have been sacked. the prime minister s spokesman says the pm has full confidence
whether these are correct and we don t get to see the full messages but as you say, they are very ripe indeed so let s look at the first one, where dominic cummings is complaining about slow progress of testing and it appears that the prime minister suggests matt hancock is hopeless, and he uses, as you were perhaps suggesting, martin, an anglo saxon expletive to emphasise this view. in the second whatsapp message, mr cummings alleges that the health officials have been turning down ventilators because the price had gone up. the prime minister seems to blame matt hancock himself and says in terms, he has been hopeless. and in the third of these exchanges come again, if the message is genuine, the prime minister seems to think the provision of ppe has been a disaster and contemplates replacing matt hancock with michael gove. dominic cummings thinks that might make matters worse, though. what is interesting about all of this, i think, is that if these are genuine
exchanges, it shows some of the chaos that was going on inside government around march and april last year, when the pandemic struck. but there s a whole series of other allegations in dominic cummings dossier are as well. he says for example that the current border policy, which was raised by sir keir starmer at pmqs, is a joke, and has allowed the delta variant to spread but said in effect there was no border policy betweenjanuary but said in effect there was no border policy between january and march last year because at that time, the strategy was for herd immunity, a strategy which he had to push, he says, very hard to overturn and because of that, a whole range of other things didn t happen. there was no testing, for example. he claims matt hancock was taking credit for a testing regime but in fact it was number ten that were pushing the big increase in testing. he is also very suspicious, i think it needs to be said, on the question of whether people got the treatment they need
the prime minister is backing matt hancock but if you look elsewhere in this rather weighty blog that dominic cummings posted just before pmqs, he is suggesting that both the prior minister and matt hancock were in an 0rwellian row away trying to rewrite history to claim they never had backed, for example, herd immunity or that in fact they had never really been a ppe shortage, both of which he says are untrue. 7000 words, i believe, in the blood, if anyone s got the time to read it. thank you very much, for the moment, iain watson in westminster. joe biden is meeting the russian leader, vladimir putin, for the first time since he became us president. relations between the two countries are at their lowest ebb in decades. mr biden has previously described mr putin as a killer . 0ur correspondent sarah rainsford sent this report from geneva. it began with a handshake and smiles but these are adversaries, not friends. joe biden, after all,
in mr hancock. let s speak to our political correspondent iain watson. so we have had a response and no rejection of the messages as being inauthentic stopper aiello that is right, i think matt hancock probably has the safest seat at the cabinet table because there is no way boris johnson will be sucking somebody on the basis of what his disgruntled former aide says. i the basis of what his disgruntled former aide says. the basis of what his disgruntled former aide says. i think equally, were matt former aide says. i think equally, were matt hancock former aide says. i think equally, were matt hancock to former aide says. i think equally, were matt hancock to be - former aide says. i think equally, were matt hancock to be sacked, former aide says. i think equally, l were matt hancock to be sacked, it might look like an admission that everything dominic cummings is complaining about happened to be true. so matt hancock is staying in place and what downing street are saying on the