Dominic Cummings insists that he behaved ‘reasonably’ in driving 260 miles to Co Durham, and that he has not considered quitting

In a highly unusual press conference in the rose garden of 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s chief adviser said he made the journey because of fears over a lack of childcare if he became incapacitated with Covid-19, but also concerns about his family’s safety.

Mr Cummings said “I have not offered to resign”, adding: “I have not considered it.”

He said stories suggested that he had opposed lockdown and “did not care about many deaths”, but he told reporters: “The truth is that I had argued for lockdown.

“I did not oppose it, but these stories had created a very bad atmosphere around my home, I was subjected to threats of violence, people came to my house shouting threats, there were posts on social media encouraging attacks.”

Mr Cummings said he was worried that “this situation would get worse”, and “I was worried about the possibility of leaving my wife and child at home all day and often into the night while I worked in Number 10”.

“I thought the best thing to do in all the circumstances was to drive to an isolated cottage on my father’s farm,” he added.

The defence of his actions comes amid furious calls for him to resign or be sacked by Mr Johnson for travelling to County Durham in March to self-isolate with his family after his wife developed coronavirus symptoms.

Mr Cummings denied further reports which suggested he took a second trip to the North East on April 14.

Before today’s conference, it was reported Mr Cummings travelled to Co Durham in March to self-isolate with his family — apparently because he feared that he and his wife would be left unable to care for their son — while official guidelines warned against long-distance journeys.

Further reports had also suggested he took a second trip to the North East in April, having already returned to London following his recovery from Covid-19 — a disease which has seen more than 45,000 people in the UK die after contracting it.

Mr Cummings said the prime minister had asked him to publicly give his account and he acknowledged he should have spoken earlier.

“I know that millions of people in this country have been suffering, thousands have died, many are angry about what they have seen in the media about my actions,” he said. “I want to clear up the confusions and misunderstandings where I can.

“In retrospect, I should have made this statement earlier.”

Mr Cummings said: “My tentative conclusion on the Friday evening was this: if we were both unable to look after our child then my sister or nieces can look after him.”

He added: “But, I thought, if I do not develop symptoms and there’s a testing regime in place at work I could return to work if I tested negative. In that situation I could leave my wife and child behind in a safe place — safe in the form of support from family for shopping and emergencies, safe in the sense of being away from our home which had become a target and also safe for everybody else because they were completely isolated on a farm and could not infect anybody.”

He said the nearest other homes are “roughly half a mile away”.

Mr Cummings said he had not asked the Prime Minister about his decision and admitted that “arguably this was a mistake”.

He said: “I did not ask the prime minister about this decision. He was ill himself and he had huge problems to deal with. Every day I have to exercise my judgement about things like this and decide what to discuss with him.

“I thought that I would speak to him when the situation clarified over the coming days, including whether I had symptoms and whether there were tests available.

“Arguably this was a mistake and I understand that some will say that I should have spoken to the prime minister before deciding what to do.”

Mr Cummings said he was told at around midnight on March 26 by the Prime Minister that he had tested positive for Covid-19.

After discussing the national emergency arrangements, Mr Cummings said he went to Number 10 the following day for a series of meetings.

He received a call from his wife, who was looking after their four-year-old child, who said she felt badly ill, had vomited and felt like she might pass out.

That led to Mr Cummings’ decision to swiftly leave No 10 — actions that were caught on camera in Downing Street.

After a couple of hours his wife felt better and Mr Cummings returned to Downing Street.

But he said that evening he discussed the situation with his wife — including the fact that many in Number 10 had developed coronavirus symptoms.

He was worried that if both he and his wife fell ill there was “nobody in London we could reasonably ask to look after our child and expose themselves to Covid”.

Answering questions in Downing Street’s garden, Mr Cummings said: “I don’t regret what I did. I think reasonable people may well disagree about how I thought about what to do in the circumstances, but I think what I did was actually reasonable in these circumstances.

“The rules made clear that if you are dealing with small children that can be exceptional circumstances.

“And I think that the situation that I was in was exceptional circumstances and the way that I dealt with it was the least risk to everybody concerned if my wife and I had both been unable to look after our four-year-old.”

Mr Cummings said that he drove up to Durham with his wife and son and did not stop on the way.

He said the next day he woke up in pain and “clearly had Covid symptoms”.

He added: “So I drove the three of us up to Durham that night, arriving roughly midnight. I did not stop on the way.

“When I awoke the next morning, Saturday March 28, I was in pain and clearly had Covid symptoms including a headache and a serious fever.

“Clearly I could not return to work anytime soon. For a day or two we were both ill, I was in bed, my wife was ill but not ill enough to require emergency help.”

Mr Cummings said he could see why people basing their opinions on media reports of his actions could be furious.

“If you are someone sitting at home watching the media over the last three days then I think lots of people would be very angry and I completely understand that,” he said.

But he said he hoped his explanation would allow them to see he was in a “very complicated, tricky situation”.

Mr Cummings said that on April 2 his son fell unwell and was taken to hospital but he was still too ill to go with him.

He added: “During the night of Thursday April 2 my child woke up, he threw up and had a bad fever. He was very distressed.

“We took medical advice which was to call 999, an ambulance was sent, they assessed my child and said he should go to hospital.

“I could barely stand up, my wife went with him in the ambulance, I stayed at home, he stayed the night in hospital.”

He said that in the morning his wife called to say their son had recovered and could return home.

Mr Cummings said that he drove to the hospital to pick up his wife and son but did not leave the car or come into contact with anyone on the way.

He said as he was recovering he went for a walk in the woods next to the cottage they were staying at which was private land and while they saw some people they had no interaction with anyone.

Mr Cummings said that by April 11 he was still feeling “weak and exhausted” but had no Covid symptoms so thought he would be able to return to work the following week - possibly part-time.

He added: “It was obvious that the situation was extremely serious, the Prime Minister had been gravely ill, colleagues were dealing with huge problems and many were ill or isolating.

“I felt that I should be able to return to work if possible given I was now recovering in order to relieve the intense strain at Number 10.”

Asked about the nature of any contact with his parents, Mr Cummings said he had had “shouted conversations” with them from a distance.

He said: “I was in a cottage, 50 metres or so away from everybody else. Obviously we kept very, very far away from them. There are various reports that I visited them, I was staying with them. That’s all completely untrue.

“My parents are in their 70s. Obviously I did not want to give them this disease. And so we stayed very far away.

“We did have some conversations but they were on a farm and they were shouted conversations at a distance. They weren’t some of the things that have been reported.”

Mr Cummings denied he had broken the “spirit” of the rules and said he had not offered his resignation to the prime minister.

He said: “No, I have not offered to resign. I have not considered it.

“I think it’s reasonable to say that other people would have behaved differently, in different ways, in this whole situation.

“But as I stress I was trying to balance lots of competing things.”

He said he could not have remained in an isolated cottage for weeks afterwards because he was involved in vital work in Downing Street.

“I thought that if I could return to work then I should seek to return to work”, he said, and took “expert medical advice” before doing so.

Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner tweeted: “This is actually painful to watch. He clearly broke the rules, the Prime Minister has failed to act in the National interest. He should have never allowed this situation with a member of his staff.”

Labour MP Chris Bryant tweeted: “This Barnard Castle bit is a manifest breaking of the very express instruction not to travel that weekend. It was repeated time and again. But Cummings thought he knew better.”

His party colleague Peter Kyle tweeted: “If you have symptoms you stay home...you don’t go for a drive to see if your eyes work!! This is much, much worse than I had expected. Much worse. Dominic Cummings is bringing down the government right in front of our eyes.”

Green Party MP Caroline Lucas tweeted: “My heart goes out to every parent making tough choices during this crisis but I’m genuinely struggling to understand why circumstances Dominic Cummings found himself in were exceptional, yet not the circumstances that saw 13yr old Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab die alone in hospital.”

Shortly before today’s press conference, Durham Police has issued a new statement, in addition to its statement from Saturday.

The statement said: “We can confirm that on April 1, an officer from Durham Constabulary spoke to the father of Dominic Cummings.

“Mr Cummings confirmed that his son, his son’s wife and child were present at the property. He told the officer that his son and son’s wife were displaying symptoms of coronavirus and were self-isolating in part of the property.”

The statement continued: “We can further confirm that our officer gave no specific advice on coronavirus to any members of the family and that Durham Constabulary deemed that no further action was required in that regard.

“Our officer did, however, provide the family with advice on security issues.”

Several Conservative backbenchers have joined calls from opposition parties for Mr Cummings to quit or be sacked, amid warnings that his actions have “undermined” efforts to fight coronavirus.

It comes as Durham’s acting police and crime commissioner, Steve White, said there was a “plethora” of additional information which deserved “appropriate examination”.

He said he has written to Durham police’s chief constable asking her to “establish the facts concerning any potential breach of the law or regulations in this matter”.

Meanwhile, the prime minister is chairing a cabinet meeting where ministers are expected to discuss the easing of restrictions for certain sectors of the economy, including the reopening of some non-essential shops.

It follows confirmation that the phased reopening of England’s primary schools will commence on June 1.

Mr Cummings’ actions have sparked fury among some MPs, and led to warnings that he has “undermined” efforts to fight coronavirus.

Professor Stephen Reicher, a member of the government’s advisory group on behavioural science, told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “If you look at the research it shows the reason why people observed lockdown was not for themselves, it wasn’t because they were personally at risk, they did it for the community, they did it because of a sense of ‘we’re all in this together’.

“If you give the impression there’s one rule for them and one rule for us you fatally undermine that sense of ‘we’re all in this together’ and you undermine adherence to the forms of behaviour which have got us through this crisis.”

Gloucestershire’s independent police and crime commissioner Martin Surl said Mr Cummings’ actions made a “mockery” of police enforcement earlier in the lockdown.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think it makes it much harder for the police going forward - this will be quoted back at them time and time again when they try to enforce the new rules.

“But I think more importantly it makes something of a mockery of the police action going back when the message was very, very clear: stay at home.”

Mr Johnson said he could “not mark down” Mr Cummings for the way he acted, and told the Downing Street press conference on Sunday that, following “extensive” talks with his aide, he concluded “he followed the instincts of every father and every parent”.

He said Mr Cummings had “acted responsibly, legally and with integrity”.

But Tory former minister Paul Maynard said: “It is a classic case of ‘do as I say, not as I do’ - and it is not as if he was unfamiliar with guidance he himself helped draw up.

“It seems to me to be utterly indefensible and his position wholly untenable.”

Senior Conservative MP Simon Hoare, who had earlier called for Mr Cummings to go, later criticised Mr Johnson’s press conference, telling the Daily Mail: “The PM’s performance posed more questions than it answered.

“Any residual hope that this might die away in the next 24 hours is lost.”

Somerton and Frome MP David Warburton said he was “unconvinced” by the PM’s defence of Mr Cummings, while Tory grandee Lord Heseltine said it was “very difficult to believe there isn’t a substance” in the allegations about Mr Cumming’s movements.

The PM also came in for stinging criticism from bishops, who accused him of treating people “as mugs” and with “no respect” after he opted to stick by his chief aide.

The Rt Rev Nick Baines, Bishop of Leeds, tweeted: “The question now is: do we accept being lied to, patronised and treated by a PM as mugs?”

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said it was his “understanding” from the prime minister that Mr Cummings and his family did not break the law in their trip to Durham during lockdown.