DOMINIC Cummings has said he "behaved reasonably and legally" in taking a 260-mile lockdown trip to his parents house.

Boris Johnson's top aide was spotted by witnesses at his parents’ home in Durham, according to a joint investigation with The Mirror and The Guardian. 

Cummings started suffering from a bout of Covid-19 at the end of March which left him self-isolating with his wife and son for two weeks.

READ MORE: Dominic Cummings investigated by police after flouting lockdown rules

Downing Street claimed he was in quarantine in his London home but a report has revealed that he was actually 250 miles away in the North of England. 

At a Downing Street press conference he revealed Johnson did not know about the trip.

He admitted that “arguably this was a mistake”.

He said: “I did not ask the Prime Minister about this decision. He was ill himself and he had huge problems to deal with. Every day I have to exercise my judgement about things like this and decide what to discuss with him.

“I thought that I would speak to him when the situation clarified over the coming days, including whether I had symptoms and whether there were tests available.

“Arguably this was a mistake and I understand that some will say that I should have spoken to the Prime Minister before deciding what to do.”

Cummings added: “My tentative conclusion on the Friday evening was this: if we were both unable to look after our child then my sister or nieces can look after him.”

He added: “But, I thought, if I do not develop symptoms and there’s a testing regime in place at work I could return to work if I tested negative. In that situation I could leave my wife and child behind in a safe place – safe in the form of support from family for shopping and emergencies, safe in the sense of being away from our home which had become a target and also safe for everybody else because they were completely isolated on a farm and could not infect anybody.”

He said the nearest other homes are “roughly half a mile away”.