The Justice Secretary who oversaw the courts during the pandemic has called for an amnesty for the more than 29,000 people given criminal convictions for breaking Covid rules. The Telegraph has more.
Sir Robert Buckland said the 29,383 people fined by the courts should have their “slates wiped clean” rather than risk their career prospects being hampered by convictions handed out at an “exceptional time”.
Sir Robert’s call has been backed by two former Cabinet ministers and charities while a source close to Alex Chalk, the current Justice Secretary, said he was also sympathetic to the idea of wiping the slate clean.
Magistrates fined people for breaking Covid restrictions, resulting in criminal convictions that could bar them from working as teachers, social workers or police officers.
Police can pass on these details to potential employers if they are deemed ‘relevant’ for criminal background checks for sensitive jobs where applicants deal with vulnerable people or children.
People are also required to declare any criminal convictions when applying for visas to visit countries like the U.S. and Canada, both of which reserve the right to permanently ban anyone who fails to reveal one.
Offences including attending gatherings, leaving home during lockdowns and failing to wear face coverings resulted in fines, with three quarters of those handed out between 2020 and 2023 going to people under the age of 40.
Sir Robert, who was Justice Secretary from July 2019 to September 2021, said any background criminal checks should focus on those who might be a threat to public safety, rather than people fined in the “exceptional circumstances” of a pandemic.
He said: “It is not proportionate or necessary at a time when we want to encourage and support as many people back to work as possible. If it is not being recorded in the usual way as a previous conviction, I would wipe the slate clean.”
Sir Robert is among three former Cabinet ministers and charities demanding an amnesty following the Government’s previous assurances that Covid fines were not intended to criminalise large numbers of people.
Sir David Davis, a former Cabinet Minister, said all but the most egregious breaches should be “obliterated” from the record. He said: “Much of the Covid regulation was heavy handed, unnecessary and penalised people wrongly. For this to turn into a lifetime penalty is a shameful disgrace and we should correct it as soon as possible.”
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former Business Secretary, said: “It is time for an amnesty on Covid fines which were an unnecessarily draconian measure at the time but with hindsight look entirely disproportionate.”
Penelope Gibbs, Director of charity Transform Justice, said: “The Covid laws were enacted too hastily, poorly drafted and badly explained. So people often broke the law unwittingly and had no right to free legal advice if they were prosecuted.
“Many of those fined now have criminal convictions which could harm their job chances for years to come. We should have an amnesty that wipes the slate clean of all these Covid offences.”
Among those landed with convictions were an 18-year-old student who attended a party during a lockdown, a 35-year-old man who hosted family members on New Year’s Eve and a 72-year-old woman who travelled back from Kenya without evidence of a negative Covid test.
They’ve left this a bit late, haven’t they? They’ve had years to do this and they bring it up in their last two weeks in power.
Worth reading in full.
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“We don’t save a lot relative to oil and gas, but I would still recommend any house with a heat pump also gets solar panels,” he says.
The cognitive dissonance is strong with this one.
I wonder if they save anything at all relative to gas?
Of course not! It’s interesting they didn’t factor in anything to do with long term maintenance and ultimately asset replacement – clearly they believed a mechanical device would simply work ‘forever’ which is naive at best. It shouldn’t be too much work to drop an oil fired boiler back in there, or gas with a propane tank setup.
Solar panels are a revenue stream “thanks” to feed-in tariffs whereby as mandated by Government, electricity retailers must pay more per kWh by a substantial margin for electricity fed-in than electricity supplied.
That’s why the economics are favourable.
We other lucky consumers pay for this by higher charges in our bills.
Mr and Mrs Watts will need megawatts if they want to keep warm.
I guess the government is already preparing a solution for them in the form of “voluntary” euthanasia.
The Inuit would use ice flows. Environmentally friendly.
Fewer ice floes in Buckinghamshire…
Mr and Mrs Watts – another fine piece of nominative determinism!
But yes an absolute unfolding nightmare.
Harsh fact of life – Conning yourself into installing a cheat pump is worse than being conned onto installing a cheat pump by state-sponsored scammers.
No substitute for a hydro-carbon powered boiler, when you take into account purchase price, cost of house-upgrading and the state-sponsored highest unit electricity price in the world.
Whilst they might not be on the gas grid, many have lpg tanks as an alternative to oil.
Still that’d be admitting you made a mistake with the heat pump in the first place…
Cause: “they did enjoy an advantageous scheme of selling the power they generated from solar panels back to the grid”
and
Effect: “the cost of electricity has soared”
The power from solar panels was of no use to the power companies, but they were forced to pay for it anyway.
Sunken cost fallacy ( trademark of government’s COVID and Nut Zero policies, to name but just two ) … Invested so much in this [scheme, technology, policy, emotive virtue ], can’t pull out now.
Solar panels will save us. And a vegan diet.
Sigh …. I am an emphatic person, but it’s being stretched awfully thinly recently … Awfully …
No comment
We just upgraded our oil boiler for less than £5k. Add a tank.
Sorted.
One day there may be millions of pensioners living in houses with failing or failed heat pumps that they cannot possibly afford either to run or replace or obtain loans to do either
I won’t be one of them. They can keep their heat pumps.
Me neither…they can shove them along with the electric vehicles!
I don’t want to see any old person struggling due to affordability to heat their home. That said, it’s hard to have sympathy with anyone who falls for this ‘saving the planet’ bo11ocks. Anyone who installs a heat pump, or solar panels, or buys an electric car because they think they’re being ‘green’ is buying one for completely false and non-existent reasons, which is where my sympathy ends.
“We had a reporter up from the local paper asking us about our solar panels and our heat pump,” recalls Mr Watts.
So since 2008 I and others have had money taken out of our pockets via taxes and via hidden charges on our energy bills to line the pockets of Mr and Mrs Watts so they can have reduced costs whilst mine and others’ go up and up.
Sympathy for them? I should co-co.