Dominic Cummings has admitted the debacle over his March 2020 lockdown road trip “undermined public confidence” in the government.
The former aide today “deeply apologised” for the way he presented his farcical press conference in the No10 rose garden.
But he refused to apologise for his actions - instead revealing he “couldn’t tell the whole story” last year about why he drove 300 miles in a national lockdown to Durham.
Mr Cummings told MPs he had already discussed moving his family out of their London home due to security threats, including a few days before he fell ill with Covid.
Around March 22, he said, he said to his wife: “We’ve been discussing it for months - we’ve got to get out of here on Friday”.
For that reason, he said, he decided to “stonewall” the Mirror’s story before U-turning and giving a press conference three days later in the No10 rose garden, due to demands from Boris Johnson.
But he decided not to go into any detail about the security threats because he was still in government.
He told MPs: “I ended up giving the whole rose garden thing where what I said was true, but we left out a crucial part of it all. The whole thing was a complete disaster.
“It undermined public confidence in the whole thing.”
Health Committee chair Jeremy Hunt raised one question over Mr Cummings’ new version of events, asking: “If you were moving your entire family out of London for security reasons, why did you move them back?”
He replied that when back in London he could hardly walk 50 metres. “If it was up to me I would have left my wife and child behind. She was extremely worried about me.”
He insisted his “testing my eyesight” excuse for his trip to Barnard Castle “didn’t seem crazy at the time.”
But he added: “I can completely understand why people think the whole thing was weird and obviously I wish I’d never heard of Barnard Castle and wish I’d never gone and wish the whole nightmare had never happened.”
Mr Cummings said “that whole episode was definitely a major disaster for the government and for the Covid policy.”
He added: “I know that my misjudgement caused huge trouble. I deeply apologise for it.”
Mr Cummings confessed that he knew the impact his actions and defiant press conference had on public confidence in lockdown.
“As soon as the whole thing happened I knew the whole thing was a complete disaster,” he said.
But asked why he never said the three words “I am sorry”, he told MPs: “The truth at the time was no, I wasn’t sorry about moving them out of London and I didn’t think it was a terrible mistake, I thought it was completely the right thing to do.
“But the problem was we were trapped in a situation where I was only telling part of the story so the whole thing was just a complete disaster.
“Obviously I am extremely sorry about the way the whole thing worked out, because the reality is I had the whole security problems again afterwards.
“Twice further I had to move my family out of the house again because of problems at the house, despite the Covid rules.
“I stress for all the journalists watching, the further stories about me going back are false. It is true that I moved my wife and child back out of London despite the Covid rules but that was in discussion with the police. But I did not leave London.”
Mr Cummings today insisted “much of” the Mirror’s story was “completely wrong” as police had spoken to him, as reported, but only “about security issues”.
