Cummings faces police probe over ‘beauty spot trip’
What d’you mean, he’s not at home AGAIN?
DOMINIC Cummings is facing a possible police probe after a pensioner spotted him breaking isolation rules on Easter Sunday.
Robin Lees, 71, reported the Prime Minister’s adviser to Durham Constabulary after allegedly witnessing him out at the beauty spot of Barnard Castle on April 12.
The picturesque town, with its 12th century castle ruin, is a 25-mile drive from his parents’ farm in County Durham where he was staying at the time with his wife, journalist Mary Wakefield, and their young son.
Amanda Hopgood, a Lib Dem Durham councillor, has also written to Chief Constable Jo Farrell urging her to investigate various alleged sightings in the area.
The councillor asked the force to use CCTV footage and number plater recognition to ‘investigate whether Mr Cummings may have committed an offence under the provisions of section 15 of the 2020 Health Protection (Coronavirus) Regulations’.
The Barnard Castle sighting is based on a single account by retired chemistry teacher Mr Lees, who says he took down the number plate of a grey Range Rover being driven by the Cummings family.
The registration matches a vehicle understood to belong to the Prime Minister’s senior adviser, Sky News said.
Mr Lees’s account emerged yesterday morning, but since then he has made an official complaint to Durham Constabulary. He wrote to the force: ‘In the light of recent information I feel that as well as an important breach of the lockdown there may also have been concerns over Health Protection Regulations. I assume you are able to view CCTV to ascertain whether this vehicle travelled locally or from further away.’
Durham Police are yet to respond to the two complaints, but it is understood they are considering whether they should investigate further.
Mike Barton, the area’s former chief constable, said Mr Cummings clearly ‘broke the rules’ even before the alleged Barnard Castle trip, simply by travelling 260 miles from his London home to stay with family in Durham.
‘Let’s not beat about the bush, he broke the rules, it’s very clear,’ the former police chief said. ‘Not only did they do that and travel 260 miles, but also have then tried to justify it and evade their responsibility through the use of weasel words... I find it quite shocking really.’
Mr Lees told The Observer he saw Mr Cummings and his family walking by the River Tees before getting into the car around lunchtime on Easter Sunday.
‘I was a bit gobsmacked to see him, because I know what he looks like,’ he said. ‘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 said he carried out an internet search for the number plate on returning home and that it was still on his computer search history.
Calling for Mr Cummings to resign, Mr Lees told the paper: ‘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.’
Mr Cummings was condemned by the town’s former MP yesterday. Helen Goodman said lockdown rules meant she had been unable to visit her elderly father Alan, 93, in his final days at a care home a short walk from her home in Barnard Castle – just as Mr Cummings was visiting the town.
‘I think it’s terrible,’ she told BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend.
She said ‘the isolation really broke him’ and he ‘got more and more confused and distressed.
The retired architect died 12 days later on April 24.
The former Labour MP, who lost Bishop Auckland – which covers Barnard Castle – at the last election, added: ‘What was the point of the sacrifice that we all made? What was the point of the miserable, lonely death that my father had?
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