The former justice secretary Sir Robert Buckland has called for an amnesty for more than 29,000 people given criminal convictions for breaking Covid rules, today’s Telegraph reports.
Buckland, who was justice secretary from July 2019 to September 2021 and is seeking re-election in his old seat, 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 is quoted by the Telegraph as saying:
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.
Support for the proposal is said to have come from two former Conservative cabinet ministers, Sir David Davis and Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Penelope Gibbs, director of the campaign group Transform Justice, is quoted as saying:
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.
The story has been picked up by the Daily Mail, which adds that such an amnesty could mean that the fixed penalty notices issued to Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Carrie Johnson in April 2022 for attending a birthday gathering for the prime minister in No 10 would also be wiped out.
Suggestions of an amnesty have been made from time to time but the idea does not seem to have been taken up by the government or opposition parties. Different views have been expressed on whether this would be fair to those who have already paid fixed penalty notices.
Comment
If this idea is to be proposed by ministers, it needs much more thought than it appears to have been given so far.
There are arguments in favour of taking pressure off the courts. There are good reasons for not saddling otherwise law-abiding citizens with criminal convictions resulting from extraordinary circumstances.
But the middle of an election campaign is not the best time to be proposing reforms that could have been considered by the government or its advisers at any time since emergency restrictions were lifted.
If I were a cynic and given the proximity of the election, I might presume that this was a craven attempt to distract from the rank hypocrisy of the ruling classes at that time. Luckily, however, we can expect so much more from our dear leaders….
Hmm…..! Are we truly to contemplate the unmeritorious exoneration of for example Boris and Carrie J and Sunak who as part of the Number Ten bubble knowingly flouted the rough and ready measures that government had effected? On the basis presumably that they were special, exceptional and therefore outwith the consequences visited upon all the rest of us? For those who had inadvertently fallen foul of them certainly they should be free of those blemishes and what of so many of us who to our considerable personal detriment and often in distressing family circumstances observed both their letter and their spirit. What a fresh slap in the face that would represent, especially given all the protracted wriggling and dismissive reactions when their rampant irresponsibility had come to light!