Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey highlighted the journey which the then No10 senior aide defended in an extraordinary press conference in the No10 Rose Garden.
Mr Cummings was widely condemned for the trip. But Boris Johnson stood by his then top adviser at the time as he argued that he took a 25-mile drive to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight before driving back to London.
The controversial aide had earlier driven his family from London to Durham, at the end of March 2020, to stay at his father’s farm after his wife fell ill with suspected coronavirus.
Mr Johnson and the Conservative Party are fighting a growing “sleaze” storm after a bombshell blog by Mr Cummings last week made damning claims about the refurbishment of the Prime Minister’s Downing Street flat, an inquiry into the leaking of plans for a second lockdown, and the Prime Minister’s conduct.
During a media round this morning, Ms Coffey made reference to the trip to County Durham while speaking to at least two news outlets, a sign which suggested it was part of a co-ordinated campaign to discredit Mr Cummings.
Asked about Mr Cummings on Sky News, she said: “A lot of people will have seen Dominic Cummings for the first time ever last year when he gave a press conference in the Rose Garden in No10.
“They will have come to their own views I’m sure the public, and meanwhile the Prime Minister continues to get on with the key things that really do matter to people, the people’s priorities.”
Appearing shortly afterwards on Times Radio, she made similar comments, stressing: “I expect most of your listeners will have interacted with Dominic Cummings for the first time last year when he gave his press conference in the Rose Garden.”
The Cabinet minister also sought to shift the focus back onto the battle against Covid-19 and the roadmap to recovery.
Mr Johnson was expected to tell the Cabinet today that the Government must “stay totally focused on the public’s priorities, on fighting Covid, delivering vaccines and creating jobs as we proceed on the path back to normality”.
The war between Mr Cummings and the Prime Minister exploded last week when No10 accused the former adviser of being behind a series of leaks including WhatsApp messages between Mr Johnson and business tycoon Sir James Dyson.
Mr Cummings hit back with an incendiary blog in which he:
* Alleged that the Prime Minister had at least at one stage been considering a plan to get donors to pay for the revamp of his Downing Street flat which Mr Cummings says he warned him would be “unethical, foolish, possibly illegal”.
* Claimed Mr Johnson had talked about the possibility of blocking an inquiry into the leak of the plans for a second lockdown if it risked implicating a friend of his fiancee Carrie Symonds.
* Argued Mr Johnson had as Prime Minister fallen below “the standards of competence and integrity the country deserves”.
* Denied leaking text messages sent between Mr Johnson and Sir James in which the PM pledged to “fix” a tax issue for Dyson engineers returning to the UK to join the race to build thousands of desperately-needed ventilators as Britain was hit by the first coronavirus wave.
* Signalled he was prepared to say more about the Government’s handling of the Covid crisis, which he has already criticised, when he appears before the health committee next month.
Downing Street has rejected the claims by Mr Cummings who was forced out of No10 after losing a power stuggle last autumn.
Ms Coffey also backed Mr Johnson over his denial that he had not said that he was prepared to let “bodies pile high” rather than order a third shutdown.
“The Prime Minister says he didn’t say them…I take the Prime Minister on his word,” she told Sky News.
“I’m not aware that any politician has said anything like that, or indeed any other person that I’m aware of.
“There’s an element here about trying to keep on with the main task at hand. We’ve got through this challenging time, we’re still not out of it, that’s why we’re still encouraging people to take up their vaccines.”