UK Prime Minister’s Adviser to Make Rare Statement Amid Lockdown Trip Scandal – Reports

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Dominic Cummings, senior adviser to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, is set to make a rare statement and field journalists’ questions on Monday amid a scandal that came to light this past weekend after media reported that the adviser had flouted the country’s lockdown rules to visit his parents.

Cummings will speak to reporters despite the code of conduct for government advisers forbidding them from taking part in any political controversy through the form of verbal or written statements, the Sky News broadcaster reports, citing Downing Street sources.

This past weekend, The Guardian newspaper reported that Cummings, his wife and their child traveled 260 miles from London to the northeastern city of Durham in late March to stay with his parents after his wife started displaying COVID-19 symptoms.

The adviser justified his decision by saying that he and his wife wanted to ensure that they could guarantee childcare in the event of both of them falling ill with the disease.

Cummings’s trip went against government guidance that implores anyone with symptoms of the disease not to leave their house for any reason.

On Sunday, UK newspapers reported that the adviser then made a second trip to Durham at a later date.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and leading cabinet ministers have backed Cummings, saying that he acted responsibly.

Labour leader Keir Starmer, dozens of Church of England bishops, and even Conservative lawmakers have slammed both Cummings and the government for attempting to justify the adviser’s flouting of the rules, citing the sacrifices that many people have made by not seeing family members for two months amid the lockdown measures.

Cummings was the architect of the UK’s successful Vote Leave campaign in the 2016 Brexit referendum and was later appointed as Johnson’s lead adviser.