Secret civil servant tells National of fury over Cummings

The civil servant, who we have declined to name to protect his job, took the rare step of penning an article after he was left outraged by the Prime Minister chief aide’s actions.

He said “the perception of double standards was now uncontained” and any junior civil servants who had acted like Cummings would be placed under investigation.

The official described the episode “as a turning point for standards in public life” as he called for other ministers to resign.

“Enough. Can someone in the UK Government show some integrity and stop defending the indefensible? A junior minster has done so, to his credit.

“But there’s still no sign that any other minister is going to. This is a teachable moment – a turning point – for standards in public life,” he wrote.

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“What Cummings did – and the continuing defence of him – undermines the Civil Service Code, to which special advisers are subject to, and it undermines the rule of law. Under the heading ‘Integrity’ in the Code, you will find this line: ‘You must comply with the law and uphold the administration of justice’.”

His intervention comes as huge tensions have emerged between the civil service and ministers.

Following Johnson’s defence of Cummings on Sunday night, a tweet posted by the official UK Civil Service Twitter account read: “Arrogant and offensive. Can you imagine having to work with these truth twisters?”

The tweet from the UK Civil Service Twitter account, which is verified and followed by more than 240,000 people, was later deleted.

An investigation was launched on Monday after what was described as an “unauthorised” message was posted and was liked and retweeted thousands of times.

The civil servant said it was double standards that no investigation had been launched into Cummings while one was swiftly begun into the critical tweet.

“The perception of double standards is now uncontained, like a virus itself, hugely destructive to good governance – which the Civil Service Code is there to protect,” he wrote.

“I have seen some say about that deleted UK Civil Service tweet that calling out a breach of the Code like that is somehow itself a far worse breach.

“But where is the line – when can civil servants call out serious misconduct? Civil service impartiality remains an extremely important value in our constitution. But I’m not sure it trumps every other value always. This wasn’t someone publicly undermining government policy – leave that to ministers – it was someone protesting wrongdoing at the highest level, after impunity had been conferred at the highest level.” He added: “By his own admission, Cummings left his home and brought the virus to among other places hundreds of miles away, a hospital.

“In violation of the basic purpose of the Health Protection Regulations – to prevent the virus spreading across the country.”

The official went on to suggest any junior civil servant acting in the way Cummings had when he travelled to Durham from London and then later to Barnard Castle “to test his eyesight” would be put under investigation.

“If a junior civil servant in the Cabinet Office had done that, would they escape investigation? Would the Prime Minister say of them, ‘he acted to minimise the spread of the virus’?” he wrote.

“Thousands of public servants across the UK have been working flat out for months in response to the pandemic. We are lucky, actually – we have secure jobs and that’s more than most can say right now. Most of us are not on the front line either.

“But we are the public too. We stayed at home too. We cared for and schooled our children while working from home: while building new

hospitals, designing emergency economic support, and preparing the very legislation that Cummings flouted.”

Cummings has denied breaching lockdown laws.