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| - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Wednesday it was time to "move on" from the scandal over top aide Dominic Cummings' cross-country travels during the coronavirus lockdown, as he faced a rare grilling from lawmakers dominated by the topic. Johnson, who has seen his public support suffer the sharpest fall for a Conservative leader in a decade, called the furore around his senior adviser's controversial actions "a distraction" and said "now is the time to leave it aside". "It's been a very, very frustrating episode," he told a watchdog committee of senior MPs in his first appearance before it since becoming premier last summer. "I understand why people have been so concerned. But... what we need to do really is to move on." Cummings has prompted a furious public and political backlash over his travels to his family's home in northern England despite the government's strict rules to curb the coronavirus pandemic which prohibited leaving home except for exceptional reasons. The top aide, who suffered from COVID-19 symptoms at the time while his wife had contracted the virus, claimed he needed to make the journey to ensure he had childcare options for his four-year-old son. "The Cummings affair seems to have really cut through to the public and is taking a rapid toll on support for the government in general and the prime minister in particular," Tim Bale, Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London, told AFP. "The danger is that it triggers and reinforces a long-held concern among British voters that the Conservative Party cares more about its rich friends than about ordinary folk." A YouGov poll for The Times newspaper showed the Conservative lead over the main opposition Labour party shrink by nine points in a week. The survey put the Tories on 44 percent -- down four points -- and Labour on 38 percent, up five points over the past seven days. The last Tory leader to see his lead fall by the same amount was David Cameron during the 2010 general election campaign. A poll in the Daily Mail newspaper showed Johnson's approval rating had plummeted from 19 percent to minus one percent in just a few days -- despite leading his party to a comprehensive general election victory just six months ago. Cummings, one of the architects of the 2016 Brexit campaign, drove his wife and son on a 264-mile (425-kilometre) trip from London to Durham, northeast England, during the strictest phase of Britain's coronavirus lockdown. He has also admitted taking a 60-mile round trip to a local beauty spot -- as he explained, to test his eyesight -- before driving back to London. Although some have suggested the support and criticism of Cummings is split along pro- and anti-Brexit lines, Bale says public disquiet goes further. "An awful lot of Leavers think the whole thing stinks -- something that should worry the government, big-time." Britain is one of the worst-hit countries by the pandemic, with more than 46,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19 by mid-May, according to official statistics. Johnson's government, whose tally only includes deaths confirmed by a positive test and has counted 37,460 fatalities, has faced growing criticism over its response -- now intensified by the Cummings scandal. Dozens of Tory MPs have now demanded he lose his job, while one junior minister has quit in protest. Smaller opposition parties have also called for him to be sacked while the main opposition Labour party has demanded a government inquiry. "I'm not certain right now that an inquiry is a very good use of official time," Johnson told the committee. But Labour MP Yvette Cooper accused the prime minister of "putting your political concerns ahead of clear public health messages". "On the way into this crisis, you were criticised for getting a whole series of messages, decisions wrong," she added. "We need you to get this right now." dmh/jj/bmm
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