MATT Hancock today mounted a desperate pitch to avoid the sack with a gushing victory speech trumpeting Britain’s vaccine rollout.
The Health Secretary put himself at the heart of the jab mission as he fought to save his job following Dominic Cummings’ blistering attacks last week.
Boris Johnson’s former adviser branded Mr Hancock a serial liar and said he should have been fired for “at least 15-20 things” during the crisis.
This afternoon the beleaguered minister used a speech at Oxford University to launch his fightback ahead of his own grilling by MPs next Wednesday.
Waxing lyrical, he said: “The UK vaccination effort has without doubt been the best programme I’ve ever been involved with – it’s been an honour.”
Britain has streaked ahead in its immunisation drive and today marked a milestone of 75 per cent of all adults jabbed.
Claiming “lots of people stop me and ask how we did this”, Mr Hancock said the fast rollout was “no accident” and stemmed from their good decisions.
He added that lots of naysayers believed a vaccine would take more than a year to develop, yet insisted: “But I knew that
Mr Hancock hailed: “I want to take a step back and reflect on this extraordinary project, this extraordinary team – the vaccine heroes as I call them – and the extraordinary response of the public.”
Chris Whitty, Patrick Vallance and Jonathan Van Tam were among the scientists to be single out for praise.
