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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I suspect there may be such a large crowd in London this Saturday demanding our freedom from lockdown, that the police’s problems policing crowds to date will appear rather trivial by comparison.
Let’s hope so!!
Fingers crossed. Thinking of heading down myself
Let’s hope so, Arthur.
Just the kind of sand in the gears we want to see!
Meanwhile just one death with Covid reported in England today.
#Clownworld
Panic, Panic; Lockdown, Lockdown!!!
PCP Set To Be Listed For Hearing At Bromley Magistrates Court
https://www.thebernician.net/pcp-set-to-be-listed-for-hearing-at-bromley-magistrates-court/
“One week ago, we were informed by telephone that PUB’s PCP papers are now with the designated court’s listings department, who expect a case number will soon be issued, following checks by the legal team at Bromley Magistrates, to which it was transferred for processing and listing by the Westminster court where the case was laid last month.
Effectively, this means that the case files contained enough prima facie evidence of pandemic fraud for Westminster to transfer the case to Bromley, for the purposes of performing the final legal checks [the initial checks having been done by the south London court’s legal department] and listing the first hearing of the case at the Kent court.”
……….
Good work, but why are they not also trying to prosecute Boris Johnson?
I had been wondering where our Corona Committee was. I salute you all. I won’t wish you luck. I wish you justice. And if thoughts, appreciation and admiration were fuel, you’d go a long way on mine..
“Social distancing rules”….”Covid rules”….”Social distancing guidelines”…
The usual blurring of lines from the media Police exist to keep the peace and enforce the LAW. Last time I read all the silly Statutory Instruments they use as “law” none of them mentioned distancing.
yeah – I’m a bit confused. My understanding is that social distancing is not a legal requirement – it’s only guidance – so we can all cheerfully ignore it if we so choose. Have I got it wrong?
I don’t think it was ever/is law as applied to individuals. I don’t know what law if any there was that applied to say a pub, which put its tables too close together. They may be liable to forced closure on Health & Safety grounds but I think there’s a process to go through there. A lot of it is just govt laziness and bullying, with a complicit media.
I guess as applicable to individuals it’s sort of law indirectly as gatherings of > 2 were illegal if from different households, now > 6 unless only from 2 households etc, so if you were in the park less than 2m away from others maybe you could be accused of gathering. I don’t know what a gathering is in legal terms.
The whole thing shows that the law is not a suitable vehicle for micromanaging human interactions.
That’ my understanding – the police have no remit on this.
“The local councils have made it easy for people to do pretty much what they want.”
Such bitterness and resentment over people doing something they want to do. Is that where we’re at?
What some people want to do is go inside a bar, listen to a DJ, and dance till 6am. So how is sitting in the gutter like a prostitute, shivering in a hat and gloves, doing what you want?
I love how the coppers feel the need to ‘police’ peaceful crowds. Pity they don’t have the same urge when it comes to burglary. Notice too the Telegraph’s insinuating description as ‘revellers’ of law-abiding customers sitting at tables.
And how the coppers seem so stressed out at having to ‘police’ peaceful crowds.Good to know that there is so little rape, murder, robbery and violent assaults in the UK that the police get stressed out by coronavirus regulations.
Furious pub landlord yells ‘get out of my pub’ to Sir Keir Starmer on visit to Bath (msn.com)
Hopefully the start of lots more to come!
Most MPs have been hiding from their constituents for the last year under cover of the Coronavirus lockdown rules. When they start meeting their constituents face to face again I think they are going to get quite a shock about how angry many of us are. At them.
HOPE SO.
I can’t wait to see mine. But I think he knows enough to avoid my address as it’s attached to the several letters I’ve written demanding action.
Mine ran into my small close of 7 houses leafleting, missed my house completely and was out the road by the time I got to the door
a pity his business partner is a pussy.
Omg! Such a 90s thing to say!
Loved it, and over on social media, it’s all love for Rod, (bar the odd hater). I doubt they’ll ever be without customers again.
I sympathise. I had hoped that once he was in, we’d see better. But the fact is that he made Corbyn look like a adjutant. It’s like he’s been tranquillised for the last year. Maybe they forgot to put him on to charge. I don’t know. I suppose having Blair meddling can’t have done him much good, either.
Nevertheless, when you consider his former career and his Jewish family connections, you’d think he’d be less spineless. That his own history might give him moral fortitude. Maybe consider that as a lawyer there is an expectation that he not assist in the oppression of the fundamental human rights of his fellow citizens. That when people talk of Nuremberg Laws, it might ring a bell. Instead, he supinely steps back and only steps forward to enable to government.
He doesn’t have a bigger majority (sad face). It wouldn’t matter what he did, (sad face). Anyone would think he hadn’t had charge of an organisation dependant on the individual bravery of victims of crimes to step up and be witnesses, in trials whose end game IS to protect society.
Finally I understand why despite increasing understanding of consent, we see so few rape and sexual assault convictions, and the streets have become an even more dangerous place for young women than they were under the 1980-90s Conservatives. Keir Starmer has the curious distinction of being the man who made me regret the loss of Jeremy Corbyn from public life.
I will never vote Labour again. Because a vote for Labour is a vote for the Conservatives.
A vote for the Con men or a vote for the Lab rats- same difference, you end up with totalitarian pigswill.
Frightening. We are heading for the time when there will be no elections.
“The creatures outside looked from Conservative to Labour and from Labour to Conservative and from Conservative to Labour again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
‘Maybe they forgot to put him on to charge.’
Your last paragraph is spot on. Given that Labour and Cons are now ‘two cheeks of the same a**e’ people really need to be brave when next deciding where to put their cross, and stop voting for either of the cheeks.
This guy is a legend. Typical that the article wastes no time in side-lining his views, instead choosing to attempt damage limitation by focussing on his pathetic business partner’s virtue signalling.
They’re already talking about Indian variants so get ready
“There be Injun(variant)s in them thar hills”. In which case Lincolnshite will be fine, (again).
Yep, funny how one can have an Indian variant but mustn’t talk about a Chinese virus!
Also funny that the areas supposedly most affected over the last year (+) are where lots of people with Indian backgrounds live (Birmingham, Leicester, Bradford, Manchester)….
You wait, they are gearing up for the Pakistani variant and then they can blame Muslims and divide everyone that way. They already tried to blame Muslims last year by making out that large extended families were disease vectors.
They’re determined to have us herded, covid or no covid
How about reopen fully and rely on the patrons to defend their institutions? A good old fashioned pub fight with some coppers will certainly change their minds about the ease of enforcing Covid rules on pubs. Y’all Brits need to stand up, perhaps violently, like we have in America to this tyranny and not submit, not go gently into that quiet goodnight.
I guess they are no longer LEO’s (Law Enforcement Officers) but GEO’s (Guideline Enforcement Officers) …
“Look! Someone’s doing something! Judge them! Hate them!”
“ making it difficult for police to enforce social distancing guidelines. ”
Why on earth are the Police enforcing guidelines?! They have enough on their plates enforcing the law. Anti-social distancing is not the law!!!
The Government produce many guidelines for my own good and that if the NHS eg I should eat five fruit and veg a day (or is it 7 or 10 now). Prob would save more lives than not hugging a tipsy stranger, but the Police don’t take it upon themselves to come and arrest for me for not bothering to roast an f-ing aubergine today do they. Well not yet anyway…
The Wooden Tops don’t seem to have a lot of common sense (what a surprise). When we were let out of our prisons last summer, the South West was visited by hordes of tourists from the rest of the UK; without masks and not a lot of social distancing either. Was there a consequent massive outbreak of this mild respiratory virus, was there hell? So why even bother to ‘police’ these guidelines; they’re irelevant to the spread of the virus, unless you’re virtue signalling? Exactly the same virtue signallers as the local government numpties who decided to ruin childrens’ education even more by making them take LF tests and make them wear masks.
We are being ‘governed’ by a totally incompetent bunch of ignorant dick heads. And the worst thing is the alternatives in our ‘democratic’ system are no better. Grrrrrr…..