Beergate inquiry into Starmer kept public onside, say police

THE Beergate investigation into Sir Keir Starmer was necessary to maintain public confidence in policing, the Chief Constable of Durham Constabulary has said.

Jo Farrell, who leads the force that carried out the inquiry, said the decision to launch its investigation was taken because of the “weight of material” passed to police.

She said it was vital her officers examined the allegations “without fear or favour” so the public could see nobody was above the law and to demonstrate that police could be trusted.

In her first newspaper interview about the case, which comes on the eve of the Labour Party conference, Ms Farrell told The Sunday Telegraph that the investigation had been very challenging because of the intense scrutiny.

But she said she was satisfied the inquiry had been carried out thoroughly and correctly and stood by the findings.

Sir Keir was accused of breaching social distancing laws when he was pictured drinking beer and eating a takeaway curry with colleagues in April last year while lockdown rules were still in place.

The Labour leader insisted he had done nothing wrong.

Durham police carried out a twomonth investigation and concluded there had been no breach of the regulations.

The investigation came two years after Durham police also investigated Dominic Cummings, the former prime minister’s chief adviser, who was accused of breaking the law by driving to Barnard Castle during lockdown.

Ms Farrell said the prominence of the two people accused of wrongdoing meant her officers could not simply ignore the allegations.

She said: “If we think back, we were in a pandemic and that legislation was to prevent people dying.

“And people will argue, ‘well it was an £80 fixed penalty notice’, but these are high-profile political figures, so it was important that people could have confidence. It was challenging because we were front and centre of every media outlet, and everyone had an opinion.”

Ms Farrell said the investigation had been made more difficult because the Covid laws had been drafted in haste.

She said: “This was untested legislation and it hadn’t filtered through all the layers and then we were trying to interpret against it.”

Sir Keir and 16 other attendees at the event were eventually cleared of any wrongdoing, with police concluding they had a reasonable excuse for attending the gathering because they were working.

‘Untested legislation had not filtered through all the layers and we were trying to interpret against it’