David and Samantha Cameron left their eight-year-old daughter alone in a pub as they travelled home from Sunday lunch with friends, it emerged last night. The prime minister, his wife and three children had enjoyed an afternoon meal with two other families at a restaurant, when they took their eye off their eldest daughter Nancy. When the family gathered their things and left Cameron shared a car with his bodyguards while Samantha followed behind with son Elwen, six, and daughter Florence, 22 months.
The prime minister thought Nancy was in the car with his wife, while Samantha thought she had jumped in with her father. It was only when both cars pulled up to Chequers, two miles away, that they realised she was not there. A Downing Street source said the “distraught” parents rushed inside and telephoned the pub, where staff reassured them that their daughter had been found alone in the lavatory and was being looked after.
The staff knew who the girl was but had been unable to contact her parents because, as one pub insider put it: “It’s not like you can look up David Cameron in the phone book and then ring to say, ‘You’ve left your daughter behind’.” “You’d have thought someone would have done a headcount or something,” the insider told The Sun.
