STAY ELITE
■ ‘I don’t regret what I did’ says Cummings ■ No thought of quitting over breach of lockdown ■ 260-mile drive to his parents ‘perfectly legal’ ■ And that trip out? It ‘was to test his eyesight’
DOMINIC CUMMINGS yesterday refused to apologise and said he had not even thought about resigning as he insisted his 260-mile trip at the height of lockdown was within the rules.
Boris Johnson’s chief adviser said he had no regrets about taking his wife and child to stay in a ‘not very nice’ cottage on his parents’ farm on March 27.
At the time, the official government message – now changed to ‘stay alert’ – was ‘stay at home’. But Mr Cummings denied there was one rule for him and another for everyone else.
He confirmed that, on his wife’s birthday during their stay near Durham, the family drove 30 miles to scenic Barnard Castle.
But he said it was only to check that his eyesight, which had been affected by coronavirus, would be OK for the drive back to London.
During the trip out they stopped to play in the woods, he confided.
The prime minister continued to stand by Mr Cummings last night. But scientists warned his actions had left the lockdown ‘trashed’ and more than 20 Conservative MPs said he should be sacked.
Labour’s Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, said millions had made ‘extraordinary sacrifices’ by staying at home.
‘It really is one rule for the PM and his elite friends and another for the rest of us,’ he added as the official UK death toll rose another 121 to 36,914.
Mr Cummings said he had decided to head north to be near family after his wife Mary developed symptoms of Covid-19. He said he was worried there would be no one to look after their four-year-old son if they both became ill.
Fighting to save his career at a press conference in the garden of No.10, he insisted he hadn’t broken the stay at home rules because
they allow exceptions for small children. He admitted he had not told the PM before driving from his north London home to the farm in Co. Durham.
He said they stayed in the isolated cottage, did not have contact with his parents, and survived on food packages left at the door by his sister and nieces.
‘I don’t think it would be reasonable for some friend to expose themselves to a deadly disease when a 17-year-old niece had already volunteered,’ he said.
He added he had not stopped for petrol on the way and could not be 100 per cent sure if he had stopped on the way back.
He had already arrived in Durham before the PM knew he was gone.
‘He himself had tested positive hours earlier and was upstairs in bed,’ said Mr Cummings. ‘I spoke to him a few days later but neither of us can really remember what we said because we were both in pretty bad shape.’
He denied reports that he went back to Durham after returning to London and claimed he had been in the grounds of his parents’ estate when he was spotted out walking. ‘I’m not surprised that a lot of people are very angry,’ he said. ‘If you’d watched the media over the last three days I think a lot of people would be angry but I think people will understand it was a very complicated tricky situation. I have to make decisions like that every day.’
Mr Cummings said, after he fell ill with the virus but began to recover, he was given medical advice that it would be safe to return to work in London.
To make sure his sight would be OK for the trip, they went to Barnard Castle on April 12. ‘We just thought let’s whizz down the road and see how we feel. I had been extremely ill, my vision was a bit weird and my wife said we should drive down the road,’ he explained, even though his wife can drive.
‘We walked ten or 15 metres to the river bank where we sat by the river for 15 minutes. On the way home my child needed the toilet and my wife jumped out into the woods by the side of the road. They played for a little bit and then I got out of the car, went outside.’
Mr Cummings also said he had faced ‘threats’ at his Islington home that made him want to leave. And Mr Johnson said last night there had been protesters outside the property despite the lockdown.
The Police Federation slammed Mr
Cummings’ behaviour, adding: ‘If you’re feeling unwell and your eyesight may be impaired do not drive your vehicle to test your ability to drive. It’s not a wise move.’
And the adviser faces a police inquiry after Steve White, Durham’s police and crime commissioner, urged his chief constable to find out whether the law had been broken during the trip.
‘There is a plethora of additional information circulating in the public domain which deserves appropriate examination,’ Mr White said.
Mr Johnson admitted he regretted the row at last night’s daily coronavirus briefing. He told reporters: ‘Do I regret what has happened? Yes, of course I do regret the confusion and the anger and the pain that people feel.
‘This is a country that has been going through the most tremendous difficulties and suffering in the course of the last 10 weeks and that’s why I really did want people to understand exactly what had happened.’
Former Durham chief constable Mike Barton said the lockdown was ‘dead in the water’. ‘How on earth are the police supposed to enforce the rules now?’ he asked. ‘It makes it much harder for the police going forward – this will be quoted back at them time and time again.’