Read on Twitter
This news is really worrying for a number of reasons:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54977290
Police suspend fixed £10k fines for big gatherings
(thread)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54977290
Police suspend fixed £10k fines for big gatherings
(thread)
Since July, police have had power to issue Covid 'mega fines' of £10k for gatherings indoors or outdoors of over 30 people. As I have pointed out before, this can lead to hugely unfair results. These were meant to be about raves but mission creep happened https://twitter.com/AdamWagner1/status/1323682071299108865?s=20
Also has troubling implications for the right to protest - in my view protests of over 30 people organised by a political body are likely to be *permitted* under the current regulations but police will be enforcing inconsistently https://twitter.com/AdamWagner1/status/1300185425349353472?s=20
Speaking of which, the @PoliceChiefs have now advised police to *suspend* £10k fixed penalty notices because, I think this is what they are saying, they lead to unfair results compared to people who go to court and fines will be set according to means
The problem is that rather than suspending the entire process, the NPCC are telling police, I think, to *prosecute* anyone who holds or is involved n the holding of a >30 person gathering. This is bad too as some people would prefer to pay a fixed penalty notice even of £10k...
... rather than be prosecuted as a FPN is more likely to not be on your police national computer record than a conviction. Which is the whole point of FPNs, they are not fines, they are payments *instead* of criminal prosecutions.
But, anyway, zooming out, what this shows is that the @PoliceChiefs are so concerned at the disproportionality of these fixed penalty notices - £10k is life changing, and unpayable, for most people - they are advising police not to use them! Which is such a shambles.
The shambles being Priti Patel's shambles, not police's - they don't choose the laws they have to enforce. The Home Secretary has been rewarding police for issuing these fines which the NPCC have now said they shouldn't issue - presumably because the govt wouldn't back down?
I am acting for a number of people who have been issued £10k FPNs at the moment - they are really troubling and have unfair results in some cases. The whole system should be suspended and reviewed.
This is not reassuring. Sounds like the Home Office are ignoring the @PoliceChiefs’ concerns. Let’s see though https://twitter.com/rvernallspa/status/1328777522289446912
