Attorney general claims tweet supporting Dominic Cummings was 'not a legal view'

The attorney general has denied that she offered a “legal view” by tweeting her support for Dominic Cummings while he was under police investigation.

Suella Braverman faced calls to resign after the prime minister’s chief adviser was found to have broken coronavirus laws with his trip to Barnard Castle.

While the investigation was ongoing on 23 May, she responded to a Downing Street statement saying “Mr Cummings believes he behaved reasonably and legally”.

“Protecting one’s family is what any good parent does,” the attorney general wrote. “The @10DowningStreet statement clarifies the situation and it is wholly inappropriate to politicise it.”

Ms Braverman said she did not regret the tweet while being questioned during her first appearance before the Justice Committee on Tuesday.

“I think it’s clear for anyone to see that I didn’t offer any legal view,” she told MPs. “I don’t think a tweet of some 10 words can really be described as a legal opinion.”

The attorney general refused to confirm or deny reports that she told cabinet that Mr Cummings had not broken the law and objected to claims that she had undermined the integrity of her office.

Ms Braverman, who was appointed by Boris Johnson in February, is the government’s chief legal adviser and oversees the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

Labour MP Maria Eagle said she had voiced support for “someone accused of being a law breaker, in the middle of a police investigation, seemingly for political reasons at the behest it seems of Tory whips” as other MPs and ministers sent supportive tweets.

Ms Braverman denied that the post amounted to political interference in the criminal justice process, saying she took the independence of the police and CPS “extremely seriously”.

“There’s no question of my having interfered with or influenced any decision made by the CPS or the police on that matter,” she told MPs.

“I don’t regret tweeting in the way I did and it was a welcoming of the clarification in what was a needless politicisation of an issue.”

Durham Constabulary said that Mr Cummings would have been ordered home and potentially fined under the Health Protection Regulations if he was stopped on his Easter Sunday excursion to Barnard Castle, although his initial journey from London to County Durham was not considered a violation.

Officers said they would not be taking retrospective action against Mr Cummings.

He drove from London to County Durham with his wife and son on 27 March, when lockdown restrictions made it illegal to be outside “without reasonable excuse”.

After the journey was revealed by the press, Mr Cummings said they had stayed at a cottage on his parents’ farm and that relatives had offered to look after his four-year-old son after the couple developed coronavirus symptoms.

At the time, the Health Protection Regulations made it legal to leave home in order “to access critical public services, including childcare” but in June, the law was reworded to exclude relatives.

The law has been updated several times, with rules diverging in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as restrictions eased.

Police were caught unawares by the government’s announcement that it would be illegal not to wear a mask in shops from 24 July, and have warned that the expanding range of laws are becoming difficult to enforce.

Ms Eagle questioned why the government continued to change the Health Protection Regulations using statutory instruments, saying it left parliament scrutinising laws that had already been replaced.

Ms Braverman said the law was changed “in response to changing scientific advice and decisions at a political level”, adding: “It’s not necessarily the most convenient way of doing things but it is the reality of the situation.”

Gaps between government guidance, which is not enforceable by the police, and the law has been blamed for a string of scandals and miscarriages of justice.

More than 100 people have so far been wrongly prosecuted under coronavirus laws, and an unknown number incorrectly fined, but Ms Braverman insisted mistakes were “relatively few in number”.

All 89 charges brought under the Coronavirus Act 2020 have been overturned but the government has refused to scrap the law.

Another 26 charges under the separate Health Protection Regulations, which enforce lockdown restrictions, were found to be unlawful by the CPS and it warned that more cases are going through the system.

Ms Braverman said police had been given sufficient guidance and refuted suggestions of widespread confusion over rapidly-changing rules.

“I think the public information campaign in various media has been very effective at informing people,” she told MPs.

“Yes of course, there will be (those) who have questions, there will obviously be some concerns, but on the whole the guidance has been pretty clear.”

Since the start of the UK’s lockdown in March, a pre-existing backlog of court cases has rocketed to more than half a million.

Ms Braverman said the government was not currently planning to limit the right to jury trial in order to speed up proceedings – a measure supported by the Lord Chief Justice.

“There are a lot of options on the table but I think it is clear that the right to trial by jury is not going to be compromised,” she added.

The government is to open 10 temporary “Nightingale courts” in non-judicial buildings to increase capacity amid social distancing requirements, but MPs said 300 courts had been closed in the past decade.

Ms Braverman said the government was enabling digital hearings and investing in updates to court buildings, adding: “I think (Nightingale courts) are a big step forward in terms of increasing court capacity as we deal with the backlog going forward, and there’s been a lot of progress that has been made to ensure cases can flow through the system despite the Covid prevention measures.”