Ex-police chief says drive broke Highway Code rules

DOMINIC CUMMINGS may have broken the Highway Code by driving to Barnard Castle to test his vision, a senior ex-police officer has said.

Former Greater Manchester Police chief constable Sir Peter Fahy said the journey to the town, which Mr Cummings has said was to test his eyesight ahead of a longer journey back to London, was “ill-advised” and potentially put others in danger.

Sir Peter, who was head of Prevent from 2010 to 2015, also said he believed that Mr Cummings may have been sent back to London if he had been stopped by police on the 260-mile drive up to Durham.

He added that officers are “frustrated” by the actions of the Prime Minister’s chief adviser.

Asked if Mr Cummings would have been sent home if an officer had stopped him on his way to Durham, Sir Peter told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think at that point, in terms of what was the understanding of the regulations and the Government messaging, I think it may well be that absolutely he’d have been turned back, as many other people were turned back from things that they were doing.”

He was then asked about Mr Cummings’s drive to Barnard Castle. On Monday Mr Cummings said he drove his family to the town – which was around 25 miles away from where he was self-isolating – to test his eyesight to see if he could make the trip back down to London, 15 days after he had displayed symptoms.

He said he had some eyesight problems during his illness.

On Sir Peter said: “Clearly, number one, that’s ill-advised as a means of testing your eyesight as to whether you’re fit to drive, but again it’s hard to see – unless there’s some justification that that was to take daily exercise – how that was justified.”