The law and the behaviour of Dominic Cummings in going to Durham

sir – Dominic Cummings, when both he and his wife were exhibiting symptoms of Covid-19, travelled to be near his immediate family, in Co Durham, according to Saturday’s statement from No10.

They have a young child and it is said that there was no childcare arrangement available for them in London. Their immediate family offered to fill that gap.

George Peretz QC was reported (telegraph.co.uk, May 23) to have tweeted: “None of the listed reasonable excuses for leaving the place where he was living (his home in London) appear to apply.” That is disingenuous.

The reasonable excuses listed in Regulation 6 of the coronavirus Health Protection Regulations for England, as they stood at the time, are inclusive, not exclusive. The sole issue in the case of Mr Cummings is whether what he and his wife did, in the circumstances as they existed when they drove to Co Durham, amounted to “a reasonable excuse”.

That is a matter of opinion, not of law. Only a court can determine that; not a QC, nor Alastair Campbell, nor Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all.

Rev His Honour Peter Morrell

Nassington, Northamptonshire

sir – I was very worried when the lockdown happened because we have grandchildren, and wondered what we should do if their parents became ill.

I would have gone to them to help, as would anyone. We are a civilised nation and we care for our own.

Sarah Duncan-brown

Lee-on-the-solent, Hampshire

sir – Which word of “Stay at home” did Mr Cummings not understand?

Enid M Davies

Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

sir – What would the police have said had they stopped Mr Cummings on his way to Durham? I suspect they would have sent him home with a flea in his ear.

Pete Foster

Devizes, Wiltshire sir – The Prime Minister said that “this is a complex problem and we need to trust in the good sense of the British people”. There is wriggle room in the guidelines that thousands of sensible British people have been using.

Boris Johnson and his partner moved from their base in No10 for good reasons and returned to their second home for recuperation before finally getting back to base.

Pascal Ricketts

London SW1

sir – There is a substantial difference between receiving a regular visitor (as Neil Ferguson, the Imperial College epidemiologist, did) and Mr Cummings and his wife deciding to keep the lockdown next door to his parents, who could provide care for their child.

Professor Rudolf Hanka

Wolfson College, Cambridge

sir – Will this plague of self-righteous hypocrisy ever end?

John Eldred

Barnet, Hertfordshire