Pressure mounts on Dominic Cummings to release evidence disproving second coronavirus lockdown trip

A senior former public prosecutor has called on Cummings to release his mobile phone and vehicle tracking information to authorities.

Nazir Afzal, an ex-chief prosecutor for north-west England, is leading a campaign for a full investigation into Cummings’ movements during lockdown following a number of alleged sightings of the senior advisor in Durham.

Clare Edwards, a nurse practitioner, and her husband, Dave, told the Daily Mirror they are ‘100% certain’ they saw Cummings wondering through Houghall woods on the edge of Durham at 11am on April 19.

The couple have complained to the police watchdog of failing to investigate their claims.

Cummings has denied the accusations and is refusing to release CCTV footage and phone data which he says can prove he and his family were in London that day.

Boris Johnson has seen the evidence and Downing Street is refusing to make it available and regards the matter as closed.

In separate letters to Cummings and his wife, Mary Wakefield, lawyers for Afzal said there is a public interest in uncovering the couple’s lockdown movements over the weekend of April 17-19.

Explaining the move, Afzal said: ‘All we ask, on behalf of the law-abiding public, is that Mr Cummings, who has regularly spoken about the importance of data, provide the data that will evidence his whereabouts and prove he was telling the whole truth in the Downing Street garden.

‘We have written to Ms Wakefield too because she has yet to give an account of her whereabouts, which has become increasingly relevant as witnesses give their accounts. The public deserve the truth, nothing else.’

The letters asked for the location data from the couple’s mobile phones and their two Land Rover Discovery vehicles the family were seen using in April and May.

They also requested the couple’s authorisation for police to check automatic number plate recognition records.

During his press conference in the Downing Street rose garden in May, Cummings said the claim that he had returned to Durham on 19 April was false. He said: ‘Photos and data on my phone prove this to be false, and local CCTV, if it exists, would also prove that I’m telling the truth that I was in London on that day. I was not in Durham.’

The letter to Cummings from Afzal’s lawyers reads: ‘Having highlighted the importance of such evidence to the nation, you will no doubt agree that it is important that you ensure its provision, in light of the continuing controversy surrounding these matters.

‘Because you expressly made reference to and relied upon phone and other camera-recorded data that you said would corroborate your account and would show that the contradictory witness accounts were ‘false’, any unwillingness now to produce that data would be highly significant.’

Durham police found that Cummings may have breached lockdown rules by travelling to Barnard Castle on April 12 to ‘test his eyesight’ but made no finding on his decision to leave London because the three-day investigation was confined to County Durham.

Afzal, whose older brother died of Covid-19 on April 8, and senior Labour figures have called on the Metropolitan police to investigate all Cumming’s alleged lockdown breaches.