New witnesses cast doubt on Dominic Cummings’s
lockdown claims
Exclusive: eyewitness says top No 10 aide left
isolation to go 30 miles to popular tourist town
The government has defended Dominic Cummings’s actions
in travelling to Durham from London when he had Covid-19 symptoms.
Matthew
Weaver
Published
onSat 23 May 2020 19.30 BST
Devastating
new claims have emerged that Dominic Cummings further breached the lockdown
rules, as Downing Street came under sustained pressure to fire the prime
minister’s most senior adviser.
The new
testimony suggests Cummings left the home where he was staying in Durham to
visit a town 30 miles away. He was allegedly spotted back in Durham on 19
April, days after he was photographed in London having recovered from the
virus.
At the
time, with the country at the peak of the pandemic, the government was
insisting that people should be staying at home.
As Cummings
faced calls to resign from across the political spectrum, the government was
forced to defend his actions.
Ministers
insisted he had stayed put once arriving at a property in Durham, where he had
travelled after contracting the symptoms of coronavirus to seek the support
from his extended family.
But the new
claims would appear to demolish this defence and intensify questions over his
claim that going there was permitted because he needed childcare while he was
sick.
The new
accounts raise fresh questions about his insistence that the initial 264-mile
trip to Durham was justified, and led to a new round of calls for the spin
doctor to quit.
The two new
witnesses were revealed in a joint investigation by the Guardian/Observer and
the Sunday Mirror.
One saw him
in Durham on 19 April, days after Cummings was photographed in London having
recovered from the virus.
A week
earlier Cummings was seen by another witness in Barnard Castle on Easter Day,
30 miles away from Durham, the investigation found. The town, which takes its
name from the English Heritage site at its centre, is a popular destination for
days out.
Robin Lees,
70, a retired chemistry teacher from the town, says he saw Cummings and his
family walking by the Tees before getting into a car around lunch time on 12
April.
Lees said:
“I was a bit gobsmacked to see him, because I know what he looks like. And the
rest of the family seemed to match – a wife and child. I was pretty convinced
it was him and it didn’t seem right because I assumed he would be in London.”
He added:
“I went home and told my wife, we thought he must be in London. I searched up
the number plate later that day and my computer search history shows that.”
Asked if he
thought Cummings should resign, Lees said: “Of course he should. [Catherine]
Calderwood [Scotland’s former chief medical officer] resigned after being
stupid by visiting her second home. [Government scientific adviser Prof Neil]
Ferguson didn’t even go anywhere, it was his mistress, and he had to resign
too.
“They didn’t
do anything nearly as irresponsible as Cummings. You don’t take the virus from
one part of the country to another. It just beggars belief to think you could
actually drive when the advice was stay home, save lives. It couldn’t have been
clearer.”
When
Cummings was apparently recognised a second time on 19 April he was wearing his
trademark beanie hat, and was heard commenting on how “lovely” the bluebells
were during an early morning Sunday stroll with his wife Mary Wakefield.
The second
eyewitness, who declined to be named, said: “We were shocked and surprised to
see him because the last time we did was earlier in the week in Downing
Street.”
Cummings
had been photographed on the 14 April in Downing Street, the first time he had
been seen back at work since recovering from the virus.
“We thought
‘he’s not supposed to be here during the lockdown’,” the source said.
“We
thought: ‘What double standards, one rule for him as a senior adviser to the
prime minister and another for the rest of us.’”
At
Saturday’s daily Downing Street press conference, the transport secretary,
Grant Shapps, said Cummings’s actions, first revealed by the Guardian and Daily
Mirror, were acceptable because he and his family had remained in isolation
after arriving at the property in Durham, rather than travelling away from the
property. “The decision here was to go to that location and stay in that
location,” he said. “They didn’t then move around from there.”
The deputy
chief medical officer, Jenny Harries, said the aim of the advice on
self-isolation was to remain “out of circulation”.
Shapps said
that the prime minister gave Cummings his full support. He added that he did
not know when Boris Johnson became aware of the circumstances of Cummings’s
decision to go to Durham.
Asked
whether Cummings’s claim that the police had not spoken to his family despite
an official statement to the contrary meant that Durham constabulary were
lying, he said that he was “not sure where the confusion in that comes in”.
Durham
police are standing by their statement on Friday that the Cummings family was
reminded of the lockdown rules on 31 March, after he was seen in the city.
After Downing
Street contradicted the official police statement and said that “at no stage
was [Cummings] or his family spoken to by the police”, Durham police provided
details of a conversation with Cummings’ father, saying that “at the request of
Mr Cummings’ father, an officer made contact” and that Cummings’ father
confirmed his son had travelled to the property.
Downing
Street has also been accused of a cover-up after initial reports that some in
No 10 knew he had made the journey.
Labour, the
Scottish National party and the Liberal Democrats have written to the head of
the civil service, Sir Mark Sedwill, demanding an inquiry into what happened.
The latest claims led to fresh calls on Saturday night for Cummings to resign.
The SNP’s
leader in Westminster, Ian Blackford, called on the cabinet secretary to
investigate the “rule-breaking and the Tory government’s cover-up” of
Cummings’s journey to Durham.
Acting Lib
Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said: “If Dominic Cummings is now allowed to remain in
place a moment longer, it will increasingly be the prime minister’s judgment
that is in the spotlight.”
Meanwhile,
the cabinet’s most senior ministers were accused of placing political loyalty
over public health, after they launched an orchestrated battle to defend Cummings.
Michael Gove, Dominic Raab, Rishi Sunak and Matt Hancock, were among those to
defend the spin doctor.
A Labour
source, commenting to the PA Media news agency about the new allegations, said:
“If these latest revelations are true, why on earth were Cabinet ministers sent
out this afternoon to defend Dominic Cummings?
“We need an
urgent investigation by the Cabinet Secretary to get to the bottom of this
matter. It cannot be right that there is one rule for the Prime Minister’s
adviser and another for the British people.”
Police
warned that the allegations came at a crucial moment in the lockdown, with
officers attempting to enforce the rules during a sunny bank holiday. George
Peretz QC, a public law barrister, also suggested Cummings could have breached
laws put in place to enforce the lockdown.
Downing
Street declined to comment on the new claims before publication. On Saturday
night they issued this statement: “Yesterday the Mirror and Guardian wrote
inaccurate stories about Mr Cummings. Today they are writing more inaccurate
stories including claims that Mr Cummings returned to Durham after returning to
work in Downing Street on 14 April. We will not waste our time answering a
stream of false allegations about Mr Cummings from campaigning newspapers.”
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