UK coronavirus live: Tory MPs call for Dominic Cummings to resign as he goes to No 10

Piers Morgan has announced he is barring cabinet ministers from making appearances on Good Morning Britain, after it allegations were broken by The Observer and the Mirror that Dominic Cummings broke lockdown rules.

Morgan said the only cabinet ministers who would be allowed on his ITV show are those who did not defend Cummings’ alleged infringement of lockdown.

Morgan also tweeted that he believes the PM’s own position might be weakened if he doesn’t sack his top adviser.

The Labour MP for the city of Durham, Mary Kelly Foy, has told Sky her inbox is full of messages from “angry and upset” constituents, who had been in similar positions but didn’t break lockdown rules.

“Dominic Cummings has acted so irresponsibly,” she said.

This from the FT’s Sebastian Payne on the unfolding Cummings saga:

And this from earlier:

This is Jedidajah Otte, taking back over from my colleague Aaron Walawalkar.

In all the furore about Dominic Cummings, a key announcement on 6000 homes for rough sleepers by housing minister Robert Jenrick has gone largely unnoticed.

Barrister Matthew Ryder QC has this to say on attempts to explain Cummings’ cross-country lockdown trip:

Unite calls for renewed HSE spot checks to reduce Covid-19 risk

The Unite trade union has urged ministers to rip up laws that were designed to reduce red tape but which are putting workers and their families at risk of Covid-19 infection, Rob Davies reports:

The UK’s largest union called on the government on Sunday to restore the power of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to perform spot checks on social care institutions, shops and pubs.

The coalition government introduced measures in 2012 to outlaw proactive inspections in such workplaces because they were deemed to present minimal danger to workers’ safety.

Unite, however, has written to the business secretary, Alok Sharma, and the work and pensions secretary, Therese Coffey, saying that the same places are among the most risky during the coronavirus pandemic and pointing out that many had been to forced to close.

Read the full report here:

Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth has called for a full explanation of the Cummings affair, adding that what “we’ve had so far has had more holes in it than a block of Swiss cheese”.

He told BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend:

This is a deadly, deadly virus which spreads with speed, which is why we went into a lockdown and it’s why the government told us and put into law a rule that we should stay at home, a rule that Dominic Cummings helped design with Boris Johnson.

His behaviour is utterly irresponsible. He has undermined that rule, as have a whole chorus of cabinet ministers including the health secretary, extraordinarily, undermined that public health rule which is about keeping people safe.

Johnson, he said, should “not hide away, should come out today at the press conference and give us a full explanation as to Mr Cummings’ behaviour”.

He added:

I’m afraid, at the moment, it rather looks like double standards, it looks like there’s one rule for the privileged elite who happen to be friends with Boris Johnson, and another rule for the rest of us who have had to make huge sacrifices, not seeing our elderly relatives, staying at home.

This is difficult for so many people and yet Mr Cummings, Boris Johnson’s right-hand man, has completely disregarded that rule.

This is Aaron Walawalkar in London here – taking over while my colleague Jedidajah Otte has a quick break and the Cummings saga continues to unfold. Please DM me any updates you have on Twitter at @AaronWala.

Conservative MP Robert Halfon has apologised for tweeting his support of Dominic Cummings on Saturday and said the PM’s aide should “face the consequences of breaking the law”.

In a statement on his Facebook page, the MP for Harlow said:

I would first like to make it clear to residents that I regret writing the tweet yesterday in the way I did about the Number 10 political adviser and his movements.

I am really sorry for it. I do not support or condone anyone who has broken the law or regulations. Anyone who has done so should face the consequences.

Here is the tweet which Halfon is apologising for:

His statement on Sunday added:

The tweet was wrong because many thousands of people in Harlow and across the country have suffered and struggled enormously during the coronavirus.

It has caused significant pain and hardship. My tweet did not recognise that. I am sorry.

My original tweet was aimed at the four-year-old child because I thought at the time that both parents had been ill with coronavirus, genuinely had no one to look after the infant – and for this reason had taken the child to their extended family to be looked after.

I thought that to do this was within the regulations.

London mayor Sadiq Khan has reminded people in the capital not to forget that lockdown has not ben lifted over the bank holiday weekend, and has asked them to “stay at home as much as possible”.

The petition calling for the sacking of Dominic Cummings has garnered nearly 55,000 signatures, most of these just over the past few hours.

The hashtag #sackcummings is trending on Twitter.

But so far, there is no sign from No 10 that anything like this will happen.

A former chief constable of Durham police has meanwhile launched a strident attack on Cummings and the government defending him, branding them self-privileged hypocrites who have damaged the fight against coronavirus at a time of national emergency.

Mike Barton, who stepped down as chief constable last year, said that the government’s defence of Cummings was causing extensive damage as police try to get the public to obey lockdown rules.

My colleague Vikram Dodd has more.

This from ITV’s Robert Peston:

The Labour party has just gone on the offensive and tweeted this:

From ITV’s Paul Brand:

This from the Telegraph’s Tony Diver:

The Conservative MP Roger Gale had told Sky he thinks Cummings is “dead in the water” if his second trip to Durham can be confirmed.

He said it was “about trust”, and that he’d like to see the prime minister announcing Cummings’s resignation at the government’s presser this afternoon.

“Mr Cummings broke his own rules, […] and there are thousands and thousands of families in similar situations,” he said.

Gale said he could understand why other MPs and cabinet ministers had initially defended Cummings, as they had understood he was merely trying to make arrangements to care for his young child.

“I think an honourable man would fall on his sword at this point,” Gale said. “The prime minister has got to deal with this. I don’t think Mr Cummings is doing him any favours.”

A British man has been detained in an Indian prison after being accused of breaching the country’s strict coronavirus lockdown rules, my colleague Nazia Parveen reports.

Sohail Hughes, 29, had been on an extended holiday to visit family in the Gujarat region before undertaking a pilgrimage of mosques when he was detained last month.

His family, who have a launched a petition to have him freed, have claimed he is being unlawfully held by Indian officials.

An emergency medicine consultant has joined the scores of people venting their anger and disbelief about Dominic Cummings’ ignoring of lockdown rules, and has just tweeted this: