As MPs cry cover-up ... just what did Boris know?
DOWNING Street was under pressure last night to come clean over what it knew and when about the Dominic Cummings affair.
Amid accusations of a cover-up, reports have suggested the aide’s inner circle knew he was in County Durham with his parents during lockdown. It remains unclear whether Boris Johnson was among them, but Opposition MPs said it seemed inconceivable he was kept in the dark.
Asked directly during the Downing Street press conference, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps would only say that the PM knew Mr Cummings was ‘unwell and that he was in lockdown but of course the PM was also unwell during the same period’.
However the PM continued working after testing positive on March 27 and only entered hospital nine days later – the same day Mr Cummings was reportedly spotted for a second time in the North East.
It was also on March 27 that Mr Cummings was seen running out of No 10, heading home, it is believed, to see his wife, Mary Wakefield, who had virus symptoms. Soon afterwards he, too, fell ill. He wrote: ‘At the end of March and for the first two weeks of April I was ill, so we were both shut in together.’
The first official acknowledgment of his illness came on March 30. Downing Street confirmed he was self-isolating after developing symptoms but did not say where. By now he and his wife and their four-year-old son were reportedly already 260 miles away.
The following day, No 10 offered the same information, but this time – crucially – said he was selfisolating ‘at home’. This was the same day Durham Police were ‘made aware of reports’ that he was staying there.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the SNP’s Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, said: ‘What I find interesting is that [ according to reports] members of Downing Street knew about this so, first and foremost, Boris Johnson has serious questions to answer over what now appears to be a cover-up.’
Mr Blackford has written to the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Mark Sedwill, calling for ‘a swift investigation into Dominic Cummings’ rule-breaking and the cover-up’.
He added: ‘This matter goes to the heart of public trust in the UK government and its response to Covid-19. If Mr Cummings won’t resign he must be removed from post.’ He branded the alleged actions the ‘height of irresponsibility’, and added: ‘Demonstrably, this is an individual who has broken the advice he has been... the architect of delivering.’
Ms Wakefield – commissioning editor at The Spectator – wrote an article for the magazine during the pair’s isolation but did not say they had left their London home.