The Gloucestershire police and crime commissioner has spoken out against Downing Street adviser Dominic Cummings.

Martin Surl, who has occupied the post since 2012, told the BBC this morning that Mr Cumming’s alleged trips north made a mockery of efforts to police the lockdown.

The Prime Minister’s senior adviser has been criticised after it emerged he drove 260 miles from London to his parents’ home in Durham in late March when it was reported he was self-isolating with coronavirus symptoms.

It is claimed by The Observer and the Sunday Mirror that Mr Cummings made two further trips in April.

Boris Johnson has stood by his adviser, saying he acted responsibly, legally and with integrity. Mr Cummings was said to have made the initial trip in order to take his four-year-old son to stay with his parents, fearing he and his wife would be unable to care for him if they fell ill.

Mr Johnson told the daily Downing Street press briefing on Sunday: "I've concluded that in travelling to find the right kind of childcare at the moment when he and his wife were about to be incapacitated by coronavirus - and when he had no alternative - I think he followed the instincts of every father and every parent, and I do not mark him down for that.”

Speaking on the BBC’s Today Programme on Monday morning, Gloucestershire’s police and crime commissioner Martin Surl said the story was going to make it much harder for police officers trying to enforce lockdown rules.

“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 actually going back when the message was very, very clear: stay at home,” he said.

“The police had a very harsh, very difficult message and now it appears people could act differently. So, I think it does undermine the police going back and their confidence and going forward it will be more difficult. They will cope, they always do.”

Mr Surl, who was elected to the commissioner job in 2012 and sits as an independent, listed a number of questions that needed to be answered – including whether Mr Cummings was at Barnard Castle, Co. Durham, on April 12 as alleged in some reports.

“People know the answers but we, the public, are not trusted to make our own minds up.”

Mr Cummings’ actions have been criticised by a number of MPs, including North Wiltshire’s James Gray. The Rt Revd Vivienne Faul, Bishop of Bristol, tweeted after Mr Johnson’s speech on Sunday: “#livingdifferently in a nation where the PM has no respect for the people. The bonds of peace and our common life (which had been wonderfully strengthened during the testing by CV-19) have been dangerously undermined this evening.”

Swindon MPs Justin Tomlinson and Robert Buckland are yet to comment.