Boris Johnson faces fresh pressure over his 'ping' farce after a top Tory was accused of "taking people for fools" in a car crash interview.
Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi was left reeling from the PM's announcement at 8am yesterday that he would avoid self-isolation, despite having contact with confirmed Covid sufferer Sajid Javid.
After public fury No10 U-turned in two hours and 38 minutes - saying the Prime Minister WILL self-isolate until July 26 at Chequers, the lavish 1,500-acre country estate where he just happened to be for the weekend.
Last night, the Prime Minister tried to claim he had only "looked briefly at the idea" of using a pilot scheme to dodge isolation.
That is despite the fact No10 issued a press release at 8am on Sunday which said, as fact, that he would definitely be doing it.
Yet today Mr Zahawi tried to keep up the fiction, bizarrely claiming the Prime Minister had only "talked about considering" staying out of isolation.
The Vaccines Minister told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "The Prime Minister considered whether he would subscribe to the pilot scheme but actually rightly opted for self-isolation."
Presenter Justin Webb interrupted to point out No10 had issued a statement at 8am.
Mr Zahawi replied: "As I said, the PM considered it, and then…"
Mr Webb pressed on, pointing out that was not what the 8am statement said.
Mr Zahawi replied: "And then he quite rightly, er, er, wanted to make sure he sent a very clear message to the nation."
But Mr Webb shot back: "There is a problem here, isn’t there, of taking people for fools.
"Why not simply say look, we thought we could be in the pilot scheme and actually we realise now that a lot of people would be very angry about it so we’re not going to do it?"
Mr Zahawi replied: "Nobody’s taking anyone for fools. Every decision that the PM had to make throughout this pandemic has been a tough decision, there are no neat options here."
He added: "Er, the Prime Minister, yesterday, erm, talked about considering it, and then very quickly realised the right thing to do is to, erm, self-isolate as it sends a very powerful message to everybody."
The PM and Chancellor Rishi Sunak's initial decision to take part in a 'daily contact testing pilot' - available to just 20 organisations - would have seen them take daily rapid tests to allow them to work from Downing Street.
But their hypocrisy was branded 'one rule for them' and a 'Barnard Castle on steroids' amid fears it would have encouraged hundreds of thousands of 'pinged' Brits to ignore isolation rules.
Meanwhile Labour have raised questions over whether the Prime Minister made a Dominic Cummings-style dash from No10 to Chequers, knowing he'd be pinged.
No10 yesterday insisted Mr Johnson was already at Chequers when he received the call from NHS Test and Trace, sometime between Saturday evening and 8am Sunday.
But it is so far unclear when he travelled down, and whether he was already aware he was in danger of having to isolate.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid - who the PM met on Friday - revealed he had tested positive via a rapid test at 1.33pm on Saturday.
However, it was not until after Mr Javid's PCR test result - which he revealed at 10.13pm on Saturday - that Boris Johnson could have had a legal instruction to isolate.
That would have given him a window in which he could have been driven to Buckinghamshire without technically breaking the law.
Keir Starmer has raised 10 "serious questions", including about the travel arrangements and how the PM was able to access the pilot scheme in the first place.
Labour's leader demanded to know what other ministers benefited from the pilot, with Michael Gove already known to have done so.
Mr Starmer also asked how inclusion in the trial was decided.
The daily contact testing pilot currently only covers 20 organisations - one of which is No10. Others include Network Rail, TFL, Heathrow and Border Force.
Mystery still surrounds the exact eligibility criteria for the scheme, which No10 officials claimed is assessed on a case-by-case basis.
When details of the pilot were published in April, the government said participants would be "randomly" placed into one of two groups - those who can avoid isolation, and a control group who still have to isolate.
Yet the PM and Chancellor both managed to get into the isolation avoidance group. Unconfirmed reports suggest they were on a different version of the scheme without a control group.
No10 has now withdrawn from the pilot scheme, with a spokesman telling the Telegraph: "No10 will not be taking part in the pilot from now on."
