Police won’t raid homes to break up family Christmas dinners

POLICE have “no interest” in interrupting family Christmas dinners, even if people are breaking the rules, Dame Cressida Dick has said.

The Metropolitan Police commissioner yesterday ruled out the prospect of officers monitoring private gatherings on Christmas Day in the wake of coronavirus restrictions.

While households in England are currently banned from mixing under lockdown rules, Boris Johnson is rumoured to be considering allowing families to get together for several days over the holidays.

But the changes are yet to be officially confirmed.

If the current rules remain in place, Dame Cressida said her officers would not be encouraged to police family gatherings as they have “lots of other things to be doing”.

“We have no powers of entry, I have no intention, anyway, of encouraging my people to be barging through people’s doors or knocking on people’s doors,” she told LBC Radio.

“We don’t know what the rules are, let’s see what they are, but I have no interest in interrupting family Christmas dinners. The police have lots of other things to be doing.”

Asked about Dame Cressida’s claim that she does not expect her officers to be policing people’s dinners on Christmas Day, the Prime Minister’s deputy spokesman said: “While he [the Prime Minister] accepts that Christmas is not going to be the same as normal this year, he intends to make sure that people can spend Christmas with their families.

“As we have said this week, it is important that the public maintain the current guidelines so that we can drive down the rate of transmission, which then drives down the rate of admission into hospitals.”

According to the latest data published by the Office for National Statistics, up to a fifth of adults polled are breaking lockdown rules.

Researchers found that 18 per cent of adults in England reported that they were in direct physical contact with at least one other person indoors in the last 24 hours, excluding those in their household or support bubble.

A similar percentage (19 per cent) was reported by those in Tier 3, and a higher percentage was reported by those living under fewer restrictions in Tier 1 (27 per cent) and Tier 2 (25 per cent) from two weeks ago.