Durham Police have confirmed that they are examining further information and complaints from members of the public over Dominic Cummings.
Cummings travelled from his main home in London to his parent’s farm in Durham eight days after the lockdown was introduced on 31 March.
He claims that he and his wife Mary, feared they would be left unable to look after their 4-year old son as they cam down with Covid-19 symptoms.
Further reports claim that Cummings then took a second trip 260-mile trip in April, having already travelled back to London.
A spokesman for Durham Constabulary said, “We can confirm that, over the last few days, Durham Constabulary has received further information and complaints from members of the public and we are reviewing and examining that information.”
Steve White the acting police and crime commissioner has formally written to his chief constable asking her to “establish the facts concerning any potential breach of the law or regulations in this matter.”
He said there has been a “plethora” of additional information which deserves “appropriate examination.”
White added, “I am confident that thus far, Durham Police has responded proportionately and appropriately to the issues raised concerning Mr Cummings and his visit to the county at the end of March.
“It is clear however that there is a plethora of additional information circulating in the public domain which deserves appropriate examination.
“I have today written to the chief constable, asking her to establish the facts concerning any potential breach of the law or regulations in this matter at any juncture.
“It will be for the chief constable to determine the operational response to this request and I am confident that with the resources at its disposal, the force can show proportionality and fairness in what has become a major issue of public interest and trust.”
Gloucestershire’s independent police and crime commissioner Martin Surl has spoken out and said that Cummings’s actions have made an absolute “mockery” of police being able to enforce lockdown.
Surl told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, “I think it makes it much harder for the police going forward – this will be quoted back at them time and time again when they try to enforce the new rules.
“But I think more importantly it makes something of a mockery of the police action going back when the message was very, very clear: stay at home.
“The police had to deliver a very harsh, very difficult message and now it appears people could act differently, so I think it does undermine the policing going back and their confidence, and going forward it will be more difficult, but they will cope, they always do.”
Durham’s former chief constable Mike Barton said on BBC Breakfast, “Policing the lockdown has probably been one of the toughest assignments ever given to the British police and they have risen to the challenge.
“But what the Prime Minister did yesterday has now made it exponentially tougher for all those people on the front line, those PCSOs (police community support officers) and cops on the front line enforcing the lockdown.
“We are in the middle of a national emergency and people who make the rules cannot break the rules, otherwise we are going to have chaos.”
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