Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Shapps says Dominic Cummings won’t resign

Grant Shapps – Dominic Cummings won’t resign

A media storm has been battering the government this morning after it emerged that the Prime Minister’s key adviser Dominic Cummings could have breached the government’s strict advice against travel during the lockdown. In March, Cummings and his family left London to self-isolate in his native Durham, in order to be near to close relatives should he and his wife be unable to look after their 4 year old son. Cummings and the government insist that he did nothing wrong. The Transport Secretary Grant Shapps defended Cummings’ decision and denied that his job was on the line:

GS: Mr Cummings decided that the best way to provide that security for [his son] was to be in a location where his sister and his niece could drop food off on the doorstep…

AM: Is he going to resign?

GS: No.

Key point of lockdown is ‘not to keep moving around’

Marr pressed Shapps on whether his defence of Cummings amounted to double standards and asked about the implications of allowing people to interpret the lockdown rules to best suit themselves:


GS: The key point has always been that people remained locked down, which is exactly, as I understand it, what happened in this case… The guidance makes clear… that we are aware that not all of these measures will be possible. The key thing is not to keep moving around.

Also Shapps – Two new allegations are not true

Fresh claims have been made in the Observer and the Sunday Mirror that Cummings had been seen out and about on two separate occasions across county Durham during mid April, and that Cummings had made a journey to London and back while he should have been quarantined.

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