Everyone should “move on” from the row over whether Dominic Cummings broke lockdown rules by travelling 260 miles to his parents’ house in Durham, a senior cabinet minister has said.
Robert Jenrick, the housing secretary, said the prime minister’s chief aide should not resign from his post over the row, arguing that he had “acted reasonably and legally”.
His attempts to douse the public outrage come as Boris Johnson was braced for a 90-minute grilling by senior MPs on Wednesday, including several Conservatives who have openly called for Mr Cummings to go.
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Labour said the prime minister “must take responsibility” for the row – and explain to the angry public why Mr Cummings’ circumstances were “so unique” that he had to flout lockdown guidance.
Mr Johnson is standing by his senior adviser but the scandal shows no sign of abating. On Tuesday, junior Scotland office minister Douglas Ross resigned over the scandal, and a snap YouGov poll found 59 per cent of the public thought Mr Cummings should resign.
Asked if Mr Cummings should quit, Mr Jenrick told BBC Breakfast: “No, he shouldn’t.
“He has given his explanation to the prime minister, who listened and concluded that he’d acted reasonably and legally.
“The prime minister then asked him to give that statement on Monday to the public and to answer questions from journalists, he answered them for over an hour and now, I think, is the time for us all to move on.
“That’s not to say this isn’t an important issue or that people don’t care about it, but I think there’s a lot more that we need to focus on now.”
Lisa Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary, said it was “unsustainable” to keep defending Mr Cummings and said the prime minister needed to act to restore public trust during the coronavirus crisis.
She said: “The prime minister has got to take responsibility for this now.
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“He’s got to decide whether he can actually account for why that situation was so unique that the rules had to be broken, and if he can’t, then I think it’s right that he should take action to restore public confidence.
“At the moment, we’ve got a situation where both the prime minister and his own adviser are just refusing to resign or to sack him, and also refusing to answer basic questions.
“That’s just not sustainable. Something has got to change and it’s got to change very, very quickly if the public are going to have confidence.”
Mr Johnson will appear before the Commons Liaison Committee on Thursday afternoon for the first time in his premiership amid calls from his own MPs to sack Mr Cummings.
The committee, which is made up of the chairs of all the other select committees, has been seeking to grill the prime minister since he took over from Theresa May last year.
