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The UK’s chief Brexit negotiator has rejected suggestions that the country’s departure from the EU could “collapse” if Dominic Cummings left the government.
David Frost said he was “quite confident” that the UK’s Brexit policy could continue without Boris Johnson’s top aide.
It came after Tory MP Danny Kruger urged Tory MPs elected in to stop going “bonkers” over Cummings after he was accused of breaching coronavirus lockdown rules and rejected calls to resign.
Kruger, who is close to Cummings and his wife Mary Wakefield, told newly elected MPs in a note that “BJ (Johnson) and DC (Cummings) together are why we won the 2019 election and them together is the only way to GBD (get Brexit done).
Tory MP Peter Bone at the Commons exiting the EU committee asked Frost: “Do you think the whole of the Brexit policy would collapse if Mr Cummings wasn’t there?”
Frost responded: “The Brexit policy is set by the prime minister and by the (exit strategy, or XS) committee, so I’m quite confident that whatever the arrangement for special advisers it would continue.”
“I’ve never had an instruction on these negotiations from Mr Cummings,” Frost added.
Frost also revealed he speaks to the PM about Brexit “more than once every two weeks”, and Cummings “relatively frequently”.
More than 35 Tory MPs have now publicly called for Cummings to leave his post.
The adviser appeared to repeatedly break lockdown rules as he feared he and his wife had coronavirus, driving 260 miles to Durham and back to London and taking a trip to Barnard Castle during his stay in the north-east.
But Johnson and Cummings have so far rebuffed calls for the adviser’s sacking or resignation.
On Tuesday, Douglas Ross quit as a junior Scotland Office minister, saying he could not “in good faith” defend Cummings’ actions.
Amid rising anger on Tory backbenches, Kruger urged MPs elected in 2019 that Cummings “minor infraction” of the rules was “totally secondary” to winning the next election, the government’s levelling up agenda and plans to overhaul the civil service and “fix Whitehall”.