The Justice Committee has called on the Government to learn
lessons from its use of the criminal law in the covid-19
pandemic. In a report published today, the Committee has argued
that a central lesson from covid-19 has been the enduring impact
pandemics can have on the criminal justice system and courts. In
future, it argues, the Government need to have the requisite
legislative tools in advance respond in a swift and proportionate
manner that does not risk criminalising behaviour in ways
incompatible with widely understood principles of the rule of
law.
The Committee found that the Government was justified in acting
quickly in the face of an unprecedented health crisis but must
learn lessons to ensure it is better prepared for the future. It
calls for the Ministry of Justice to have a more central role in
the development of all new criminal offences, as well as
improvements in the Parliamentary scrutiny and public
communication of such measures. It further calls for a wide
ranging study to be conducted by the new pandemic preparedness
agency (the UK Health Security Agency) to review the
effectiveness of key elements of the justice response to the
pandemic, including Fixed Penalty Notices and the single justice
procedure, to assess their appropriateness for future use.
The Government implemented a series of new offences to enforce
restrictions implemented to protect public health in response to
the Covid-19 pandemic,. Failure to wear face coverings when
required, restrictions on public gatherings, and quarantine
following a positive test or international travel could see fines
of up to £10,000 for repeat offenders.
The Justice Committee found that the Government was justified in
acting with speed to implement new enforcement measures in the
face of a public health crisis. However, valuable lessons must be
learnt to improve the development and implementation of such
measures in the future.
The establishment of the UK Health Security Agency is a welcome
step in improving pandemic preparedness, but it must have
adequate criminal law expertise to influence the direction of
enforcement measures. The Committee recommends that the agency
launches a study into the role the criminal justice system played
in protecting public health during the pandemic and the
effectiveness of new offences in ensuring compliance of covid-19
restrictions.
Parliamentary scrutiny is avital in testing the case for new
criminal offences and assessing their impact, as well as ensuring
the law-making process is transparent and public. The Government
must work with the Procedure Committee to understand how scrutiny
of future emergency regulations can be done more quickly.
Improvements must also be made in how public health restrictions
are communicated to the public, particularly in ensuring the line
between what is guidance and what is prohibited by law is
absolutely clear.
The Committee also calls on the Government to move away from an
over-reliance on issuing fixed penalty notices (FPNs) of
increasing amounts to ensure compliance with public health
regulations. The Government should undertake a review of the
effectiveness of FPNs and establish parameters for their future
use.
The use of the single justice procedure, where a case may be
dealt with by a single magistrate rather than a trial in open
court, should be reviewed to assess if it provided the
appropriate transparency for new and complex offences.
Chair of the Justice Committee said:
“The speed and seriousness of the Covid-19 pandemic necessitated
restrictions that we previously thought unimaginable. New
criminal offences were introduced to enforce them and it is right
that the Government acted quickly to create them. However, it is
also clear that lessons need to be learnt and improvements made.
“As the Justice Committee, our focus is on the integrity of the
criminal justice system and the Rule of Law. Our report sets out
a number of lessons for the every Government on the development,
communication and enforcement of new criminal offences.
“The new UK Health Security Agency should review the way in which
the Government used the criminal law to protect public health
during the pandemic. In particular it should examine the
effectiveness of certain measures, such as Fixed Penalty Notices
and the single justice procedure. We need to better understand
whether their use was always appropriate and proportionate, and a
model we should follow in the future.
“That the justice approach to the pandemic was not perfect in its
early stages is understandable; to fail to learn valuable lessons
to better prepare for the future would be much less so.”
