Why are we still persecuting ‘Covid criminals’?

Over 130 people are still being prosecuted for breaching Covid-19 lockdown rules in Britain – three years after the bulk of restrictions were lifted. Those found guilty of breaking or simply misunderstanding those complex, ever-changing and often nonsensical rules are still being fined. The average is £6,000. In some cases, ‘Covid criminals’ have been fined as much as £10,000.

Some of the cases of so-called Covid criminals are truly shocking. And not because of anything the Covid criminal in question allegedly did. They include an 18-year-old student fined for attending a party, and a 72-year-old woman prosecuted for travelling back from Kenya without evidence of a Covid test. A 60-year-old real-estate consultant whose phone ran out of battery en route back to the UK (rendering him unable to access his proven negative test) has endured years battling through the courts after being slapped with a fine of £1,295. An American expat was hauled in front of Stockport Magistrates’ Court for the ‘crime’ of mistakenly booking the wrong kind of PCR test on her way home from the US. A construction worker was fined £2,000 for eating a takeaway burger in his car at a local beauty spot – though he ultimately managed to persuade the court to drop the conviction.

The persecution of so many people for petty Covid misdemeanours is an astonishing waste of public money. It also cements the UK’s burgeoning reputation as a nation run by authoritarian-minded officials. Worse, it stands in dismal contrast to the near-complete absence of accountability for those at the other end of the social and political spectrum. During the pandemic, those holding senior positions in government and officialdom were guilty of far more serious failings in decision-making.

In the five years since the pandemic began, our threadbare justice system has found the resources to prosecute almost 30,000 ordinary civilians in England and Wales for breaching the rules. At the same time, there has been practically no reckoning for the government officials and leading scientific figures who dragged the UK into lockdowns that proved economically disastrous, socially damaging and largely ineffective at actually stopping the virus. It is telling that there has been so little public discussion about the devastating consequences of lockdowns, nor the fact that the government was monitoring prominent sceptics and almost certainly flagging their posts to social-media companies. Even the ongoing UK Covid Inquiry – with a team of over 150 lawyers and projected to cost over £200million – has somehow failed to raise any of these monumental errors.

We should be asking what repercussions should meet policymakers who visited house arrest on the population at large, but who flagrantly broke their own rules. We should be asking whether it was the case, as some doctors have suggested, that the public were not accurately informed about the risks to which they were exposed. Was Covid really ever a serious threat to healthy young adults and children? And if not, were the benefits of lockdowns, Covid vaccines and multiple boosters oversold to them?

Perhaps the lack of accountability for high-ranking officials reflects a lack of political will. After all, politicians of all major parties were largely aligned in their blind devotion to imposing a swift and severe lockdown on the country. There remain many who have a vested interest in avoiding difficult questions.

It is a stain on our once world-leading legal system that it continues to haul before the courts people who are guilty of nothing more than eating a burger in the wrong place or booking the wrong kind of Covid test. Meanwhile, those who devastated millions of lives appear to have escaped scrutiny. Until we confront the real perpetrators, this shameful chapter will never be closed.

Molly Kingsley is one of the founders of the parents campaign group, UsforThem.