DISGRACED former health secretary Matt Hancock told the Covid inquiry today that he is not a liar but Dominic Cummings is a malign actor.

Maintaining the government’s impression of rats in sacks, the minister in charge of Britain’s pandemic response at the time blamed the chaos on premier Boris Johnson’s top aide Cummings, who created a “toxic culture” in Downing Street.

Mr Hancock, later sacked for being caught on camera in an intimate breach of Covid rules with an aide, also admitted that the country should have locked down at the start of March 2020, three weeks before it eventually did.