Boris Johnson’s senior aide, Dominic Cummings, is facing mounting pressure to step down after it was revealed that he breached lockdown rules by travelling 260 miles to his parents’ property. Tara Pilkington brings you the latest.
In a statement, Cummings said his decision to drive from his London home to County Durham was due to fears over a lack of childcare if he were to become incapacitated with Covid-19, but also because of concerns regarding his family’s safety.
Here’s what you need to know:
- At a press conference in Downing Street’s rose garden on 25 May, which Cummings was half an hour late for, he complained that the media had suggested that he had opposed lockdown and that he did not care about many deaths.
- Commenting on the delay to the press conference, shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy tweeted: “If Dominic Cummings turned up this late to the jobcentre, he’d be sanctioned.”
- In the conference, Cummings read out a statement, which made no reference to his job security, and criticised the media for the attention that he had received since the news of his visit to County Durham broke.
- In his statement, Cummings claimed that he had acted legally and within the rules, despite reports that he circumvented the government’s own guidance.
- Mr Cummings denied that there had been “one rule for him, one rule for everyone else,” and refused to apologise.
- The press conference came just after Durham Police issued a fresh statement on Mr Cummings’s behaviour. The force said that an officer had spoken to Mr Cummings’s father on April 1 and that Mr Cummings, his wife and child were present at the property.
Previous to his current role in Downing Street, Cummings was the campaign director of Vote Leave in October 2015, and he famously designed the “£350 million a week to fund the NHS” bus.
