When Dominic Cummings was photographed sprinting out of Downing Street on the same day the prime minister and the health secretary were reported to have developed symptoms of coronavirus, observers might have assumed he was racing to attend to vital matters of state. In retrospect, many will ask whether he was just trying to beat the traffic. Over the last 72 hours, Downing Street officials, unnamed sources and ministers have attempted to cast doubt on parts of the timeline of Cummings’s travels. But an examination of the public record, placed alongside the Guardian and Daily Mirror’s reporting, means that it is possible to lay out the significant claims and counter-claims of the period in question – and where questions still remain. Friday 27 March: Downing Street On the day Cummings ran out of No 10, his wife, Mary Wakefield, appears to have been already ill, according to her Spectator article about the experience, in which she says: “My husband did rush home to look after me.” The article did not mention that soon after he rushed home, the family went to the other end of the country. The government has briefed that Cummings travelled north before developing symptoms of the virus, which is said to have struck him over the weekend of 28-29 March. Wakefield wrote that Cummings said “I feel weird” and collapsed 24 hours after he came home to look after her, placing their journey north on Friday – perhaps trying to beat the weekend getaway – or Saturday at the latest. The details of the journey from London remain unclear. Did he drive or take the train? On Sunday, the cabinet minister Grant Shapps didn’t know. He was asked whether Cummings had stopped for a break at any point on the four-hour journey accompanied by a small child and a sick wife. Despite being given notice of the question by Sky’s Sophy Ridge the evening before, and having been in contact with Cummings, Shapps was caught flat-footed. “I’m afraid I don’t have detail to the point of what time of day, and how many stops,” he said, adding that he was “expert” in transport matters and would prefer to talk about the A66.
In its defence of Cummings, No 10 said the couple had had to travel north in search of childcare from Cummings’s sister and nieces at the property owned by his parents. The former Downing Street director of communications Alastair Campbell, among others, described this as guff. He said it was unbelievable that Cummings had to travel 264 miles to get help with childcare. But, in the end, Cummings and his wife did not need childcare, No 10 have said, instead relying on the family to deliver food to their door. Tuesday 31 March: Durham The police have said that on 31 March they were “made aware of reports” of Cummings’s presence in the area. On Friday, Durham Constabulary told the Guardian and Daily Mirror that they had then contacted the family to “reiterate the appropriate advice around essential travel”. The statement confirmed – for the first time – that Cummings had left London for the north-east. But on Saturday, Downing Street insisted the police were wrong. No 10 said that “at no stage was Cummings or his family spoken to by the police about this matter”. This version is now under intense scrutiny. Under pressure to explain the differing accounts, police issued a new statement on Saturday and stood by by the original claim. Not just that, it seems the police might have been alerted to Cummings’s presence in Durham by – his father. And that it was during this conversation that police had “reiterated the appropriate advice around essential travel”. By Sunday morning, Shapps was disputing a subtly different point. He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr: “For one thing the father contacted the police, not the other way round” and claiming that security was the “key thing” in the conversation. Sunday 5 April: The ‘Abba’ sighting The following days, by Wakefield’s account, were a mixture of family idyll and health nightmare, as she made a “palace out of polystyrene packaging” with their son even as Cummings’s breathing got so bad that she feared he should be in hospital. But 10 days after her husband first fell ill, she said, he began to feel better – just as Boris Johnson went into hospital. That would place the improvement in his condition around Sunday 5 April, although 10 days after the 28th – the earliest point at which Cummings was said to have been symptomatic – was 7 April. That Sunday, a passerby told the Guardian, they spotted Cummings by sheer chance. The encounter was fleeting but memorable: Cummings was standing outside with his little boy, in “dark coat and thick tartan scarf”, and Abba was playing at full blast. On the same day, the Guardian asked Downing Street about the claims. “It’ll be a ‘no comment’ on that one,” an official responded. On the Friday of the same week, after establishing further details, the Guardian asked again. Again, the response was no comment. Sunday 12 April: Barnard Castle Wakefield did not mention that on 12 April – her birthday, according to Companies House records – they allegedly made a trip to Barnard Castle, a charming town 30 miles from the Cummings’s family property, described on the English Heritage website as having “fantastic views” and “plenty to do for families on a day out”. That detail emerged in an interview with Robin Lees, a retired chemistry teacher who lives in the town. Lees, who says he has a photographic memory, told the Guardian he was “a bit gobsmacked” to see Cummings, and then was so incensed that he made a note of the family car’s numberplate and checked it online when he got home. While government officials spent weeks refusing to talk about Cummings’s whereabouts, and have since Saturday sought to dismiss the joint investigation as “fake news” and “a stream of false allegations … from campaigning newspapers”, they have not disputed Lees’s account. His account is awkward for No 10. On Saturday, Shapps – like other Conservatives who defended the prime minister’s most senior aide – repeatedly emphasised that after the Cummings family had made their journey across the country, they had “stayed put”. Not according to Lees, they hadn’t. On Sunday, Shapps appeared to change tack.
He seemed to say that this trip would have come at the end of the quarantine period. No mention, however, of the fact this trip would seem to be a clear breach of the strict lockdown rules in place at the time. Would a journey to a popular day-trip destination on a loved one’s birthday, 30 miles from the lockdown location, constitute essential travel or compliance with the government’s “stay home” instruction? That Easter weekend, a new government campaign reminded people that even at a time when people might wish to spend time together, the rules still applied. “The new campaign reinforces the importance of staying at home over Easter,” it said, reiterating the importance of “only leaving your house to buy essentials, to do one form of exercise a day, to travel into work, but only where you cannot work from home, and for any medical or social care need”. Tuesday 14 April: London The 14-day period of Cummings’s isolation would have expired on 10 April, assuming it is counted from when Wakefield appears to have first fallen ill on 27 March. . In a piece for the Spectator, the magazine she works for, Wakefield wrote: “We emerged from quarantine into the almost comical uncertainty of London lockdown.” No clarification, however, that they had actually emerged into the capital from Durham. The Guardian asked Wakefield to confirm whether the family had been in London throughout the lockdown period, but received no reply. Cummings was photographed back in Downing Street on 14 April, clutching a bag containing a carton of soup, a tangerine and a carrot. Sunday 19 April: ‘bluebell’ woods Could Cummings have then gone back to the north-east from London? Downing Street is emphatic that he did not. The denial came after another witness claimed to the Guardian and Sunday Mirror that they had seen Cummings and Wakefield on a country walk in Houghall Woods, a beauty spot near his parents’ property in Durham. According to this account, Cummings said: “Aren’t the bluebells lovely?” While Downing Street would give no on-the-record comment before publication of the new stories on Saturday, it then issued a statement. It accused the Guardian and the Mirror of writing “inaccurate stories … including claims that Mr Cummings returned to Durham after returning to work in Downing Street on 14 April. We will not waste our time answering a stream of false allegations about Mr Cummings from campaigning newspapers.” In interviews on Sunday, Shapps said he understood the sighting in the woods was false. But there has still been no direct on-the-record denial from Cummings himself. The witness who says they saw him on that day, in that place, is sticking by their story, but had nothing more to add.