A REMAINER Labour peer passed on information to help expose Dominic Cummings’ visit to County Durham during the coronavirus lockdown.
Hilary Armstrong, a former Durham MP, was given a tip off about Mr Cummings’ whereabouts in Barnard Castle from a local contact, it has been reported.
Lady Armstrong has been congratulated by party colleagues for helping reveal the scandal, after Boris Johnson’s top aide travelled 260 miles from his home in London to stay near his parents in the North East.
It is alleged the peer passed on her information to Labour colleagues and another MP, who then went to the press.
A source told the Mail on Sunday: “Hilary has very good contacts in the region. She heard from a colleague in the North East that Cummings had been seen in Durham.
“She passed the tip on to other peers and to an MP.
“Hilary didn’t ring the papers about it herself – she got somebody else to do that.”
However, Lady Armstrong, a Blairite who in 2017 described the UK’s Brexit strategy as was “mad and dangerous” , has played down her role in the scandal.
In a meeting on Labour peers on the Zoom video conference app last week, she suggested she was “getting too much credit for it”.
However, Lady Armstrong is said to been frustrated that no one managed to take pictures of Mr Cummings in the region during his trip to Barnard Castle.
The No10 adviser, who was suffering from coronavirus at the time, went to Durham to ensure his son would have childcare.
He later drove his family to the town of Barnard Castle to test his eyesight and sit by a river for 15 minutes.
It was also claimed Mr Cummings made a second trip north, which he strenuously denied.
WHAT A JOKE
It comes as a man who claimed he was a witness to Mr Cummings in Durham admitted he made up the sighting as a “joke”.
Tim Matthews, a keen runner, was reported in two newspapers as having spotted Mr Cummings on the afternoon of April 19 – five days after the chief adviser returned to London.
Mr Matthews posted a message that read: “Here’s my two potential sightings [at] Riverbanks and Houghall Woods – I’ve been banging on about them ever since.”
He has since admitted changing the details on the Strava app to make it look as if he had seen Mr Cummings on April 19.
He told the Mail on Sunday: “I made that up afterwards, a few days ago in fact. I modified it for a little bit of comedy value.
“I undid it later, I’m sorry. A bit of comedy value even if it was really inappropriate.
“The only thing that I can definitively say is that at some point during the last few months when I was out running, I had occasion to think to myself, ‘That’s Dominic Cummings’.
“What I can’t tell you is any sort of timeframe other than in the last few months.”
Durham Police last week ruled that Mr Cummings may have committed “a minor breach” of lockdown rules by taking his trip to Barnard Castle on April 12.
Yet, the force will not take retrospective action as it would be “treating Mr Cummings differently from other members of the public”.
DUFFIELD QUITS
It comes as Labour MP Rosie Duffield, 48, apologised last night after breaking lockdown rules to be with her married lover.
She admitted breaching restrictions by meeting TV director James Routh before he moved in with her.
Ms Duffield quit her role as an opposition whip after she saw him for a walk in April and invited him to visit her constituency home while he still lived with his wife.
Last night the Canterbury MP said: I hope people can understand why I took the steps I did and know that I take responsibility for the breaches that occurred and for which I apologise.”
