Stay at home and self isolate or travel 100’s of miles to stay with parents and make no mention of it.
It’s such a fine line isn’t it?

Michael Gove has chimed up on the subject. He says "Caring for your wife and child is not a crime"

Tory MPs justifying not just breaking rules - which can be enforced by police - but breaking quarantine

Robert Halfon MP for Harlow said " Ill couple drive 260+ miles to ensure that their small child can be looked after properly. In some quarters this is regarded as crime of the century. Is this really the kind of country we are?"

Danny Kruger MP for Devises said "Dom and Mary's journey was necessary and therefore within rules. What's also necessary is not attacking a man and his family for decisions taken at a time of great stress and worry, the fear of death and concern for a child. This isn't a story for the normal political shitkickery"

They really believe they are above the law and have no sense of solidarity
No wonder they didn't think we - the responsible majority - would cope with lockdown

Are we all being unfair to Cummings? it’s not like he bought his mother a little paddock for her donkeys, is it?

About as much as it was government advice that if you fall ill while living in London you should be escorted to your second home in the Chiltons and have your girlfriend brought there too.

Downing Street defends until they realise it’s the only thing anybody is talking about. Cummings resigns saying he’s done nothing wrong but has become a distraction.

Yes, and have done. Taking a critical approach as opposed to posting unvalidated tweets, is something one should expect here. The facts as previously posted on this case were in error, therefore conclusions based on those assumptions would be erroneous. In any case this is not a government action but the actions of an individual related to the health issues of his family.

I think there is also a difference between criticising the actions of the NHS, PHE, and the government. Somethings such as stopping contact tracing when the cases became overwhelming would have been primarily an issue for PHE / HPS etc.

Some of the detailed decisions around case definitions for contact tracing I think were wrong, but that would have been an operational decision by PHE / HPS etc. for instance I think that limiting the case definition to people from North Italy was an error. By that time it should have been evident the risk of infection would have extended to outside of the five hotspot areas Italy identified. I think there were errors in pandemic planning but these are errors perpetuated over generations of governments. The issues appear to be the same in Wales and Scotland where proEU 'socialist' governments have been in continual charge of health services for longer than the conservative government has been in charge in England. This suggests that contrary to many who seem to want to identify errors as being attributable to the right wing / Brexit nature of the present Westminster government there is a more systemic problem since the same errors were made by governments of a very different political slant.

A rational discussion would be; has an error been made, at what level was the error made, what led to the error. Only if there was a clear dichotomy between policy in England under the present conservative government and policy of the Welsh and Scottish governments, and perhaps a difference from the Labour government approach to the 2009 pandemic flu can we conclude that underlying political beliefs had led to the error.

We are doing a disservice to the future if we take the easy 'Tory bad therefore any errors are the result of them being Tories' approach. Even a Tory government might do something right, it might do something wrong but that might be nothing to do with it being a government of right wing *****. Unless we know why an error happens we cannot say that a future Revolutionary Communist Party government of England would not make the same error.

They may consider that a positive.

No. Government advice rarely goes to such a detailed level. I think your question is fatuous. It would however take the approach that household members had already been exposed, so little is gained from trying to separate them. This is not unique to covid-19, but in many cases of transmissible diseases the household is cohorted because the major transmission risk has already occurred. Again the reality is travelling in a care may have some slight additional risk, over being at home for five hours, but it might have less. The child would be restrained in the car, minimising contact with its mother which otherwise is hard to prevent, and other than in cars restraining children is a crime. If child and mother were in the back, the air con set with an open window on the mother's side the airflow would minimise transmission risks. So maybe less risk, maybe more we would really need to know the details.

Yes, I think that is a far more dubious decision and was surprised there was not more criticism. I did wonder if it was because it was difficult to properly manage the issue in Downing Street. The lack of criticism made me think there was a good reason that was shared with the opposition. I had wondered if Johnson initially could not manage stairs, but I would think there would be a lift. Maybe isolation was more difficult, he would have been instructed to isolate for seven (or maybe 14) days on discharge.

Funny, I could have sworn the government advice was to isolate the sick member of the household in a room away from the other members if at all possible and minimise interaction with them, whilst staying exactly where they are for at least a week.

https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus

Chancellor jumping in as well "Taking care of your wife and young child is justifiable and reasonable, trying to score political points over it isn’t."

Delving further:

Lots of straw.

It was.

It was very clear, the likes of Cummings apparently worked hard on how to get that message out.

My other half's workmates parent's (sounding a dodgy anecdote already!) Live in the building next to Cummings's parents. They live in a retirement block with flats for those over a certain age. They used to have a farm but left it a year or so ago. If he had Covid or his wife or kid had it they shouldn't have been anywhere near that place. Then again what was the line about killing off the elderly that was attributed to him?
Perhaps they kept the farm and he moved there.
Either way it appears to be the same hypocrisy that others have list there job over.
The latest defence appears to be if he and his wife were both Iill who would look after the kid? I am fairly sure the Gvt advice was if anyone in the family is ill you should all self isolate, it wasn't drive 300 miles to isolate with another household.

:)

That’s just the version of the advice they released to the public. The real advice was known only to members of the inner circle, and was kept secret in case it fell into the hands of the enemy.

Boris hasn’t got the balls to sack Cummings and Cummings will never resign.

On we go.

Hancock jumping in. "I know how ill coronavirus makes you. It was entirely right for Dom Cummings to find childcare for his toddler, when both he and his wife were getting ill."

If only he had been as eager to protect people in care homes as he is Cummings.

Cummings has also now called @DurhamPolice liars over their statement that they spoke to him and his family.

If they can show they spoke to him we have the Prime Minister's chief adviser falsely maligning the police to save his skin. That alone should cost him his job.

Boris Johnson probably doesn't see a need for Dominic Cummings to resign. After all, Dom's done nothing fundamentally different to what Boris Johnson has done and that was all fine.

Lying ? That's Boris Johnson's SOP.

If anything, that's just enhanced his position.

Dominic Cummings defends 260-mile lockdown trip

After giving 'social distancing' advice to reporters outside his house he said
"Who cares about good looks? It's a question of doing the right thing. It is not about what you guys think."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52782913

Where "the right thing" is whatever is convenient for me, even if that is the exact opposite of what I ordered you to do.

Jacob Rees Mogg weighs in.

Looks like the official line really is going to be that people who don't break the lockdown rules don't care enough about their family.

But can’t they just hire nannies to look after the kids?

Sec 6 (d) of the Regs in England states;

"6.—(1) During the emergency period, no person may leave the place where they are living without reasonable excuse.
(2) For the purposes of paragraph (1), a reasonable excuse includes the need—
...
(d)to provide care or assistance, including relevant personal care within the meaning of paragraph 7(3B) of Schedule 4 to the Safeguarding of Vulnerable Groups Act 2006(1), to a vulnerable person, or to provide emergency assistance"

Two parents who know they have the virus (they get the test and know exactly how they got from others who had been tested positive), travel to get provision of care for their child whereby they can still isolate and the child is cared for.

The argument is whether or not something else which is better could have been done, but the law is not normally a test of what is the best option. The law is purely interpretation of the law itself. It is hard to see how the law itself was broken and easy to see how Cumming's actions can be presented as a reasonable excuse.

As to whether or not the advice was breached, yes, the advice is to stay at home if you have symptoms or the virus, but that advice does not specifically cover two parents of a child who could be put at risk by both parents being seriously ill and unable to care for them. Thereafter, it is judgement call as to whether or not it was better to take the child to care, or get care to come to the child.

There's no way that section was intended to apply to people who are displaying symptoms of the virus. The rules for those displaying symptoms are different, and have already been posted.

Well reasoned argument. Thank you for your contribution, it took the discussion further.

However, there are clearly circumstances when even people with symptoms can leave the house, in the event of a fire, to get a test for covid-19, to go to hospital, etc. The guidance is obviously guidance, it is not all inclusive and there are obvious exceptions, even though they are not specified, to leaving the house.

I originally posted because posters had been claming incorrectly that the grandparents had been caring for the child or that the parents had stayed with the grandparents.

If the Boris cared about what the UK thinks right now he would be doing the 'briefing' this afternoon not transport secretary Grant Shapps and he would be explaining why he is standing by his man,

Regarding the Regs, there is nothing to say reasonable excuse does not apply to those with symptoms. I quote the Regs because it is easy to see his defence there.

As for advice, he has to obtain care for his child. I think (not knowing all details) he went about it in not the best way. I think it would have been safer for all, that a well person travelled to Cumming's home and then delivered the child to care.

But in neither the law nor the advice are there specifics regarding two parents ill and exactly what they should do.

Compared to Fergusson and Calderwood, Cumming had a reasonable excuse to travel and is not in clear breach of the regs.

Fergusson and Calderwood did not have symptoms, so what they did is not remotely comparable.

There is absolutely no reasonable excuse for Cummings and his wife to do what they did. All that was required was for someone (the uncle who lives in London perhaps) to transport the child.

If the government is really saying that what Cummings did was OK then they are essentially giving carte blanche for everyone to ignore the lockdown rules.

Good thing Brexit freed the UK from unelected bureaucrats that set rules they themselves dont follow

There clearly was a reasonable excuse, they were both infected and they had a child to care for. They had to act.

Neither the law, nor the advice, acts as a demand for perfection as neither have instructions as to what to do under all circumstances.

I agree that it would appear safer to get a well person to collect the child, but we do not know all of the details.

That the government in this are saying it was OK to travel is in no way an excuse to openly break the regs and ignore the advice.

Update; from a Daily Mirror journalist on twitter;

"Dominic Cummings, wife and child self-isolated in Durham property with relatives dropping off food."

I thought from various reports, the child was put into the grandparent's care. If that is not the case, this is a trip to a more convenient second home situation and I cannot see how that is covered by Reg 6(d) or the advice not to travel with symptoms.

I am quite sure Cummings had people who could shop for them in London.

Mogg has already stated that in an emergency ignoring the advice or instructions of the authorities is 'common sense'.

I seem to remember that upping sticks and travelling to a second home was explicitly ruled unacceptable. For the rest of us.