A growing number of senior Conservatives are demanding the resignation of Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, over allegations that he broke the government’s lockdown rules on several occasions.
MPs including the former minister and 1922 Committee member, Steve Baker, and the chair of a select committee, Simon Hoare, said he should step aside to stop further damage to the government over its response to the coronavirus outbreak.
Party whips spent Saturday night calling backbenchers in an effort to shore up support following Guardian revelations that Cummings was spotted at a Teesside town more than 20 miles from his parents’ home in Durham.
One backbencher said the calls were a “desperate measure” to garner the support of MPs to save the job of the special adviser.
In an article for The Critic magazine, the former minister Steve Baker said the architect of the Vote Leave campaign should stand aside after travelling hundreds of miles with his son and wife, who had coronavirus symptoms, and then travelling to a nearby town.
“Dominic Cummings must go before he does any more harm to the UK, the government, the prime minister, our institutions or the Conservative party,” Baker wrote of his fellow Brexiter.
“Today’s newspapers are a disaster. Enormous political capital is being expended saving someone who has boasted of making decisions beyond his competence and who clearly broke at the very least the guidance which kept mums and dads at home, without childcare from their parents, and instead risked spreading the virus by travelling.
“It is intolerable that Boris, Boris’s government and Boris’s programme should be harmed in this way,” he wrote.
Baker’s comments follow disclosures in the Guardian/Observer and the Daily and Sunday Mirror that Cummings had travelled to his family’s home in Durham in breach of the lockdown rules, and was later spotted at Barnard Castle, 30 miles away.
In an analysis of Cummings’ working methods, Baker said his former colleague has revealed an arrogance that was apparent when he ran the Vote Leave campaign.
“As far as I am aware, among those who work with, rather than for him, only Michael Gove enjoys Dom’s respect.
“So it is hardly surprising when mums and dads were going without the childcare provided by their parents – perhaps while they were isolating for seven and 14 days with Covid-19 symptoms – that Dominic was suiting himself with a long drive, presumably with stops, to get help during his illness,” Baker wrote.
Baker has been joined by Simon Hoare, the senior Tory MP from the centre of the party and chair of the Northern Ireland select committee, who has also called for him to consider his position.
“With the damage Mr Cummings is doing to the government’s reputation he must consider his position. Lockdown has had its challenges for everyone.
“It’s his cavalier ‘I don’t care; I’m cleverer than you’ tone that infuriates people. He is now wounding the PM/Govt & I don’t like that,” he wrote on Twitter.
Sir Roger Gale, the Conservative MP for North Thanet, joined the chorus of backbenchers calling for Cummings to resign.
He tweeted: “While as a father and as a grandfather I fully appreciate Mr Cummings’ desire to protect his child. There cannot be one law for the Prime Minister’s staff and another for everyone else.
“He has sent out completely the wrong message and his position is no longer tenable.”
Damian Collins, the former chair of the culture select committee and MP for Folkestone and Hythe, said: “Dominic Cummings has a track record of believing that the rules don’t apply to him and treating the scrutiny that should come to anyone in a position of authority with contempt.
“The government would be better without him.”
The chair of the women and equality select committee, Caroline Nokes, said she told the whips on Saturday that Cummings should go.
“I made my views clear to my whip yesterday. There cannot be one rule for most of us and wriggle room for others. My inbox is rammed with very angry constituents and I do not blame them. They have made difficult sacrifices over the course of the last nine weeks,” she said on Twitter.
Craig Whittaker, the MP for Calder Valley, said: “I totally agree that Dominic Cummings’ position is untenable. I’m sure he took the decision in the best interests of his family but like every decision we take we also have to take responsibility for those decisions. You cannot advise the nation one thing then do the opposite.”
The former defence minister Tobias Ellwood also warned the government “the ship is being blown off course”.
He wrote on Twitter: “Time for a formal address from the captain offering firm leadership, command and control to resolve setbacks, reunite collective resolve and rebuild mission focus.”
The MP Sir Robert Syms also said on Twitter that a government adviser should not become the story. He said: “Whatever the merits of a Govt Advisor they should never be the story or it detracts from central message which is to get us out of this crisis. The advisor should go.”
Meanwhile, Robert Halfon, the chair of the education select committee and a former minister, withdrew his public support for Cummings and instead said the adviser should ‘face serious consequences’ if he has broken the rules.
In a supportive tweet on Saturday, he wrote: “Ill couple drive 260 miles to ensure their small child can be looked after. In some quarters this is regarded as the crime of the century.”
But speaking to yourharlow.com on Sunday, he said: “I regret writing the tweet yesterday in the way I did about the No 10 political adviser and his movements. I am really sorry for it. I do not support, or condone anyone who has broken the law or regulations.
”It is important for everyone to follow public health advice, that includes members of the government and their advisers. If those regulations or laws have been breached there should be serious consequences.”
Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, was sent out to defend Cummings on the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show.
He denied Cummings had driven back and forth from London to Durham on more than one occasion, but said he did not know whether Cummings had visited Barnard Castle.
“I’m afraid I don’t know [about Barnard Castle] but if that date was true that would have been outside the 14-day period. But I’m afraid I don’t have the information on that.
“But I do know it is not the case that he has travelled backwards and forwards, which seemed to be a major part of the stories I saw in the paper today.”
Pressed by Marr on whether there was an “extreme risk to life”, Shapps said: “A four-year-old can’t feed themselves, a four-year-old can’t bathe themselves and change their clothes, so it is clear they wanted to put some measures in place.”
On Saturday, England’s deputy chief medical officer, Jenny Harries, said everyone should self-isolate unless there was a risk to life.
Johnson pledged his “full support” on Saturday to his chief adviser, who it emerged had travelled 260 miles to the north-east in March to self-isolate with his family while official guidelines warned against long-distance journeys.
Ministers insisted Cummings had stayed put once arriving at a property in Durham, where he had travelled after contracting the symptoms of coronavirus to seek the support from his extended family.
Two new witnesses of Cummings’s movements in north-east england were revealed on Saturday in a joint investigation by the Guardian/Observer and the Sunday Mirror. One witness saw him in Durham on 19 April, days after Cummings was photographed in London having recovered from the virus.
A week earlier, Cummings was seen by another witness in Barnard Castle on Easter Day, 30 miles away from Durham, the investigation found. The town, which takes its name from the English Heritage site at its centre, is a popular destination for days out.
Robin Lees, 70, a retired chemistry teacher from the town, said he saw Cummings and his family walking by the Tees before getting into a car around lunchtime on 12 April.
When Cummings was apparently recognised a second time on 19 April, he was wearing his trademark beanie hat, and was heard commenting on how “lovely” the bluebells were during an early morning Sunday stroll with his wife, Mary Wakefield.
The second witness, who declined to be named, said: “We were shocked and surprised to see him because the last time we did was earlier in the week in Downing Street.”
Cummings had been photographed on 14 April in Downing Street, the first time he had been seen back at work since recovering from the virus.