Cummings’s Barnard Castle trip ‘undermined’ government’s COVID message, admits minister

The trip made by Dominic Cummings to Barnard Castle last year ‘undermined’ the government’s COVID message, a minister has said. (PA)

The trip made by Dominic Cummings to Barnard Castle during lockdown last year “undermined” the government’s coronavirus message, a minister has admitted.

Transport secretary Grant Shapps, who last spring defended Cummings’s trip to Durham, said the actions of the former chief adviser to the prime minister had weakened the message to the public.

His comments came as Cummings is expected to criticise Boris Johnson’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic when he gives evidence before a joint meeting of the Commons health and social care and science and technology committees on Wednesday.

Cummings will accuse Johnson of saying “coronavirus only kills people in their 80s”, ITV has reported.

There was anger from the public last year when it emerged Cummings had travelled 260 miles from London to his parents’ home in Durham last March.

Watch: Dominic Cummings leaves his post at Downing Street

In April, he made a 30-mile trip to Barnard Castle, claiming he was testing his eyesight to see if he was fit enough to drive back to London.

Shapps told the BBC on Wednesday: “I thought he was right at the time to stand by his family, to go into effective quarantine, and that’s what he did.”

But he added: “I accept it was a moment which actually in the public’s mind undermined the wider messages and I accept that.

“I thought he was doing what he thought was right by his family at the time.”

Since he stood down from his adviser role and exited the front door of Downing Street carrying a box last November, Cummings has gone on the offensive against the government in a series of blog posts and tweets.

Shapps acknowledged mistakes were made in the response to the pandemic but said the government was responding to an unprecedented situation.

“There was no rulebook and of course there have been mistakes made,” he said.

He told Sky News that Cummings “has probably tweeted most of what he’s going to say already” ahead of his appearance before MPs.

“We were making decisions under an unprecedented situation, there’s no rulebook, there’s no textbook to open and see how to deal with a pandemic, the last time the world faced anything like this was 100 years ago with Spanish flu.

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“It’s easy to be professors of hindsight.”

Transport secretary Grant Shapps had stood by Dominic Cummings after his 260-mile trip during lockdown last year. (PA)

On the “very big calls” like the vaccine programme and developing mass testing, Shapps said “we got it right”.

He dismissed the focus on Cummings as “Westminster bubble stuff”, adding: “I do find this obsession about one single adviser a bit odd”.

Asked whether Cummings is a liar, Shapps told BBC Breakfast: “I will leave it to others to judge how reliable a witness that former adviser happens to be.

Asked if Cummings was a “trusted adviser”, Shapps said: “He was certainly an adviser of the government. It’s for others to decide the trusted part of it.”

Watch: What is the row between Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings about?