A Douglas man has become the first person to be jailed a second time for a breach of the Emergency Powers Act.

Karl Allen Cameron, 30, Cronk-y-Berry, pleaded guilty to sharing private transport with a person not from his household when he appeared before magistrates on Thursday morning.

Prosecutor Rebecca Cubbon said that on May 13 at 6.10pm police stopped a car on Buck’s Road, in which Cameron was a passenger, with his partner and one other person, who was driving.

While Cameron lives with his partner, he doesn’t live with the owner and driver of the car, who received a fix penalty notice.

At the police station, Cameron read a prepared statement in which he told officers he ’wasn’t up to date with the regulations’.

Defence advocate David Clegg said that Cameron has apologised for breaking the regulations and explained that he and his partner had got a taxi into town, which is allowed under the regulations but, when they were offered a lift home, they accepted it.

Mr Clegg said that Cameron was unaware of the measures on not allowing people to share a car and said he had made an ’honest mistake’. He added that the regulations have become ’enormously complicated’.

Since the state of emergency was announced in the island on March 16, there have been at least 75 regulations and amendments posted on the Tynwald website.

Mr Clegg said during his first incarceration at the prison for a previous Covid-19 breach, his mental and physical health suffered while on the 24-hour lock down, which is in place for new inmates.

Addressing the court, Cameron said he had made a mistake and added: ’I don’t want to back to prison.’

In sentencing him to six weeks in prison, magistrate Carol Maddrell said he decided to get into a car and that custody was the only sentence available.