The Police have not been given enough notice about changes in the law and Government guidance relating to Covid over the past year, and confusion has been added by ministers failing to differentiate between the two, according to Britain’s police regulator. A report published by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services says that “mistakes were made” by the police because of unclear messaging from the Government.
[Officers’ difficulty in enforcing the law was made difficult] by a widespread confusion in relation to the status of Government announcements and statements by ministers. Ministers asserting that their guidance – which had no higher status than requests – were in fact “instructions to the British people” inevitably confused people. In some cases, police officers misunderstood the distinction, and appeared to believe that ministerial instructions were equivalent to the criminal law.For example, the two-metre distancing “rule” has only ever been in guidance (aside from some requirements on the hospitality sector such as licensed premises and restaurants). The request to “stay local” has never been a legal requirement. The suggested limits on the number of times a person could go out to exercise in a day and for how long were only ever in guidance, not regulations.
Some forces told us that they sought legal advice on the regulations so that they could produce clear guidance for their workforces. But the speed with which regulations were made and amended (usually by being added to) was great. And to many, the distinction between law and guidance remained uncertain.
In these circumstances, mistakes were made. During the initial lockdown, there was significant media coverage of what was often described as police overreach. High-profile examples included road checks to identify unnecessary journeys, drone surveillance of people in open and almost deserted places, and police action in relation to non-essential shopping and what was thought to be excessive exercise.
The exhortation only to take “essential journeys” was no more than guidance; it was not the law.
The report adds that the muddling up of the law with Government guidelines in these high-profile cases damaged public confidence in the police.
It is not the function of the police to treat Government guidance, however well-intentioned (as it undoubtedly was), as rules of the criminal law. Ministers may create criminal offences only if authorised by parliament to do so; they may not do so by the simple expedient of demanding action from a podium or behind a lectern.
And as difficulties arose and some well-publicised mistakes were made, public confidence in, and support for, the police were inevitably put at risk.
Worth reading in full.
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The situation in the UK reminds me of something Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said in The Gulag Archipelago. He said that the Bluecaps (the state police) would have a law book that no one from the public had access to. That was so that the state could change the law any which way they wanted, and because the public were kept in the dark, it was very easy for them to break the law unwittingly.
Seems to me like you have almost the same situation in the UK. Take the Highway Code. A guide book of best practices, raised to the level of law. And as a result no one actually knows what the law says. In other countries the same type of guides exist, but no one refers to them. Everyone refers to the law itself.
And it seems like this has spread to the police as well. You’d think the police would know the law and follow it. But seems to me they’re listening to hearsay coming from MPs. This confusion shouldn’t exist. They should read the law and the law should be clear.
But, then again, sounds a bit too convenient for the police. Sounds a bit like an excuse. “Sorry about beating people up in the streets over nothing… we thought he said that she said that he said it’s what we should maybe, probably, be doing.”
Do they not have pre-shift briefings telling them what new Laws have been brought in overnight or they expected to learn from Piers Morgan et al ?
It’s a leadership issue for sure, although Plods have a duty to seek clarification if they don’t understand a briefing. That leadership goes all the way to Boris via the responsible cabinet minister. In this case someone found guilty of bullying. The perfect example setter.
And that there is no real accountability gives them te freedom to act on hearsay
What you describe is everywhere in the UK. There are laws, then ‘rules’ which have emerged from guidance. BSI for instance produce guidance on just about everything. Then bodies like Local Authorities take these guidances and turn them into rules, which they make out are laws. But they are not. The UK is smothered by rules and most people act like they are laws, and so by popular consent they become ‘laws’ by default.
I remember telling my regular tyre fitter 15 years ago that the demand by the local council that the whole of their large outside yard had to be completely No Smoking was a load of bollocks since, obviously, it was not an ‘enclosed working space’.
They put the requisite signs up, duly ignored by everyone ever since.
During lockdown one my wife and kids were followed by a police van as they walked down down the street eating an ice cream they’d bought at a local shop during a dog walk. The policeman then pulled over his van and and stopped them. They weren’t breaking any laws he said but he wanted to tell them “it wasn’t moral” to be eating an ice cream in the street. The police weren’t confused by the difference between law and guidance – they were just on a massive power trip.
Aka a day with a “y” in it.
When last I looked morality judgement is not the purview of the police. This whole statement is an attempt to excuse what it really was. A bunch of uniformed state troopers enjoying effective Carte Blanche, and not having to face real criminals. Trust in the police? Pigs might fly! (So to speak)
Absolutely correct – drunk on power springs to mind.
It’s a shame they don’t investigate theft and burglary with the same enthusiasm
Imagine the damage that did to young children. How dare they?
To be confused you have to have a brain, Those plods behaving like mini Hitlers/Stalins have no more intelligence than pond life
Are you praying to your Creator? If not, may I gently warn you not to use his name as a swear word? Not because you need to fear his followers – there is no danger of them decapitating you (in contrast to a certain protected group who tend to respond violently to people who criticize the one they follow) but because you should fear the One you will stand before on judgement day.
Really? Each officer went out in the morning to the local police station armed only with their own personal interpretation of the latest bunkum broadcast on the BBC?
“OK PC Plod, you know what to do? No need to explain or anything is there?”
“I got it Sarge! Now how about issuing me baton and taser – and maybe a gun just in case?”
“You know where they all are, help yourself, but remember to sign a chitty! I’m off for a cuppa.”
Expecting the dregs of society to understand the full complexities of the law after 2 weeks training I fear is asking a bit too much. Beside the police love living in the grey areas, that’s their power-tripping happy place.
Couldn’t agree more. I lost faith in plod a long time ago.
They really don’t care, this was a genuine interaction I had once:
Walking down a town centre side street drinking from an open bottle of alcohol on Friday night on the way home from the pub. Policeman cycles past, does a quick stop and tells me “it’s illegal to drink here”. I point to the sigh which states “You may be fined £500 if you refuse to put alcohol away when asked to do so”. I said I’ll happily put it away but it is not ‘illegal’ to drink here, look at that sign. To which the reply I got was “I know the bylaw, I don’t care what the sign says”.
I’m still wondering to this day why we have road speed limit signs…
Refer my comment yesterday about Finnish Pastors arrested for outdoor preaching.
Pastor reads Finnish Penal Code to Officers about the crime of breaking up religious worship.
Officer replies ‘We are the ones who interpret the law, if we say you must do something you must do it’.
Me too
Can I get that on a t-shirt?
“…Government guidance, however well-intentioned (as it undoubtedly was)…”
I had to laugh at that little gem.
Meanwhile there’s useful clarification (on a subject that has appeared here) :
Note – the following are guidance not law :
Was it Guidance or Law that required perfectly respectable, peaceful, ordinary members of the public to be gang wrestled to the ground by trained squads of uniformed police yobs then roughly handcuffed before being hurled into the back of a van.
Good. I ignored all that anyway.
The rot set in on the police years ago.
Also 4 people died of Covid yesterday, on average 4.8 people die each day in road traffic accidents. But with Greta and the green agenda that’ll soon be zero.
One road traffic accident with 4 deaths is front page news, item #3, for 24 hours.
Well, no. There will be lots of people who did not manage to jump out of the way of a silent electric car in time.
Just had that experience yesterday, a car coming out of a drive, obscured from my view by a wall, Thankfully they have to drive very slowly to negotiate the drive way.
Well better late than never but we knew this and commented on it right from the start.
To this day, a lot of supposedly intelligent and well informed acquaintances and colleagues of mine have no clue what is/was law and what is/was guidance.
Ministers Deliberately Created Confusion by Willfully Not Differentiating Between Lockdown Guidance and Law Police Watchdog Says.
I suspect that this would probably be a more accurate headline.
Yes, the trend here to simply parrot the MSM headlines (and indeed the entire stories) without any critical analysis is not a welcome one.
I am sure it was quite deliberate. Cheaper and easier to bully people than have actual laws, if you can get away with it.
I’d echo the comments below about losing faith in the police.
It’s worth also adding that the ridiculous rules that virtually all schools have imposed are NOT the law, but are also guidelines.
That teachers – teachers, for god’s sake – have willingly gone along with this, and in so doing caused distress to a great many children, beggars belief. Well, it used to beggar belief. There’s not much belief left to beggar these days.
At least the Welsh plods didn’t have that problem. Josef Stalin Dungford made everything illegal except minimal breathing.
And a good point seen onTwitter
Jeremiah Igunnubole
@JIgunnubole
· 3h
Replying to @AdamWagner1
A little surprised that the police watchdog hasn’t included a specific human rights training recommendation in this report, especially given that the inadequate balancing of the stay at home provisions against fundamental rights by police forces’ was a consistent theme
Far too late and far too conveniently timed that lockdown is easing (though Johnson is still likely to “squeeze the breaks” at some point) and most of this ‘guidance’ bollocks will be gone for a couple months.
It reads like some sort of feign apology without apologising, hoping the public will live and let live. As far as I’m concerned, the plod in general are black-listed. They publicly shamed people on their websites for doing completely normal stuff. They have bandied government propaganda left-right and centre.
Like the scum-bag journalists and politicians, who in their majority enforced this crime against humanity, plod is not getting out of this one smelling of roses!
Make your vote count when voting for police commissioner on 6 May
Whilst the messaging may have been unclear (presumably this was deliberate in order to cow the population) the fact that the police in many parts of the country were unable to differentiate between the law and guidance is an indictment on the education of these people.
I am not a lawyer, but I am capable of reading English. It would appear that many employees in the police forces in the UK are unable to read English, let alone understand the complexities of legislation. As an accountant I had no difficulty in reading the various acts and Statutory Instruments, so I have no idea why it was too complex for the police forces, with their entourage of lawyers (some of whom I have come across in my professional career and found to be woefully incompetent), to be able to understand the law and provide guidance to their staff.
It is hardly surprising that the element of the population that supported the police in the past, of which I am one, has now lost all faith in their ability to act along the lines of what Robert Peel indicated when he set up the London Metropolitan Police (impartiality, maintenance of public respect etc.).
Don’t be too hard on the average plod : he/she will have been told what to do by ‘authority’, and will have (wrongly) assumed that this was correct. Of course, some of us are a bit more critical of token authority – but the majority aren’t.
Thing is : it’s the ‘windy turds float to the top’. ‘Twas always thus, to some extent, but present conditions have exacerbated the syndrome.
Aren’t they tacitly telling this weekend’s protesters that they will not be enforcing Covid-19 regs?
However I’d sound a note of caution. By turning up in high numbers and with camera phones on the go, you will be providing a facial recognition database of potential trouble-makers when the next, more draconian set of restrictions arrive.
So, I’d suggest that everyone switches off their phones so you and your image cannot be traced simultaneously, and wears that facial recognition subverting paint or hairdo. Or indeed a good old fashioned balaclava. #bringbackthebalaclava
https://www.survivopedia.com/6-ways-to-defeat-facial-recognition/
Police in Ontario have publicly stated they won’t be enforcing the Government’s ‘stop and interrogate’ edicts.
UK Police can make no excuses. If they believed guidance was the law then they were negligent in their preparation. If they knew it wasn’t the law then they themselves were acting illegally. Misconduct in Public Office. Either way it’s too late to say ‘Sorry’.
The real sadness is those Police Officers who genuinely want to serve the public and have been let down by those that didn’t know or didn’t care, and got off by handcuffing pensioners.
‘If they believed guidance was the law then they were negligent in their preparation.’
Except that “ignorance of the law is no excuse”. Equally culpable especially as they are paid to know.
You’ve hit on probably the the best point – and how many times do you suppose the police said those very words to the general public when fining them for travelling outside their local area, or some other ‘political guidance’ interpreted as law?
I view this report as something really positive.
They’re all beginning to put their excuses in place, I see this as the sceptics are beginning to gain ground and they’re starting to realise we will hold them all to account for their actions at some future point.
The finger pointing and blame shifting is going to increase. Cue the medics producing something similar soon with regards to the falsifying of death certificates.
This mornings roundup includes a piece about 23% of deaths being mis-attributed to Covid.
It does not say if that includes deaths downright lied about where suicides and car wreck victims were labelled as Covids with the collusion of medics, no doubt under pressure from The Management.
The Blame Game has a great deal to play out yet.
I am just an ordinary citizen and I have never been confused about the difference between laws and guidance. How anyone who is actually trained in this area can claim to be confused is incomprehensible.
The Highway Code is ‘guidance’ but you have to be familiar with it to pass your driving test and reference to it is frequently made when establishing liabilty in a Court of Law or with insurance companies.
It’s not just guidance though is it. There’s plenty of laws backing up some of the specific rules. And if you don’t adhere to the rest they can get you for reckless/dangerous driving. But you do you love.
‘It wasn’t me guv, honest!’
I can’t believe for a moment that the police did not know what they were doing and were ‘confused’ – it wasn’t so long ago that the police announced that they were only recuiting university educated degree holders so the idea that the police were not intelligent enough to differentiate between government guidelines and laws does not wash at all.
Government guidelines were taken as a license to bully and the police appeared to leap at the opportunity.
Got zero respect for the Police after the past 12 months. I was hoping a few of them would come a cropper and get stoved in by the public given their frequent over zealous behaviour. I guess an unarmed society is an easy one to push around.
Does anyone know if the limits on the number of people/households meeting together is guidance, advice or law ?
Frankly who cares? Do what you want
Given the quality of the members of ACPO, a not for profit private company, is anyone surprised at the poor level of communication and competence shown ?
Anyone who attended football matches before the miners strike will have been aware that “officers” were quite happy to lash out at both the innocent and guilty
Wouldn’t you think that when your job was to reinforce law then you’d know the difference and would be able to pass that info on to even the thickest of coppers. I’ve never been in the police but I have worked in local government and I knew the difference just from reading on the gov website
What a bunch of amateurs HMI must be… we ALL knew what was guidance and what was law – the police deliberately interpreted guidance as law because they were only too happy to go on a massive power trip. In London, they are still on it. If I am wrong, then it must be because they are as thick as the proverbial.
Indeed we ALL knew!
Think the police belatedly realised how bad their relationship with the public became. They treated normal people appallingly and in some instances used excessive force. The public will not forget.
On 6 May you will also vote for Police Commissioners – make your vote count!
This is a PR endeavour nothing else
Already have done, via my postal votes!
But quite a few police forces have lost their reputation with ordinary people, and might find it more difficult to find assistance from various witnesses etc. Not only that, many of us will have noticed how much the police segment of this tax year’s council tax bill has gone up.
I am sick of seeing police officers muzzled up to the eyeballs in those ridiculous and ineffective bits of Chinese paper.
It specifically says on the Government’s own website:
‘‘….there are some circumstances where people may not be able to wear a face covering….