More than 29,000 Covid fines issued in England and Wales

Magistrates in England and Wales have issued about 29,300 fines for Covid-19 rule breaches, according to a Financial Times analysis of data from the Ministry of Justice.

Their combined value of £25.9mn, an average fine of £884, is higher than for any other type of crime since the onset of the pandemic other than motoring offences and TV licence evasion.

The court-issued sanctions are on top of at least £8.2mn that people have paid after being handed fixed penalty notices by police, an alternative to prosecution, according to data from the National Police Chiefs’ Council, a national co-ordination body for police in the UK.

Justice campaigners said they were alarmed by both the volume and value of fines issued under the rules, which government ministers previously insisted were not intended to criminalise large numbers of people.

Penelope Gibbs, director of the charity Transform Justice, called for a “complete amnesty” on Covid prosecutions. She said people had been penalised for breaching regulations that were “new, ever changing and not entirely clear a lot of the time”.

The legislation had not been “scrutinised properly” by parliament, she added.

The court-issued fines include about 11,300 for more than £1,000 — with 29 for more than £10,000 — and their combined value is among the highest of any offence over the period, according to the FT analysis.

The £25.9mn total is substantially higher than the £6mn handed out for littering, £5.6mn for using a phone while driving and £4.3mn for seatbelt offences.

The only crimes to rank higher in the league table are for TV licence evasion, totalling £33.2mn, and motoring-related offences, including failing to provide a driver’s identity, which tops the list at £178mn.

A total of 119,000 fixed penalty notices for Covid breaches had been issued as of March 2022, with 70,500 paid, according to the NPCC. If penalties remain unpaid, the matter can escalate to court.

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Fintan Walker, co-director of the Manchester Innocence Project, said the Covid-related punishments were “not commensurate with the level of criminal activity, on any reasonable analysis”.

Different rules were in place at various points during the pandemic but they included travelling when lockdown restrictions were in force and failing to show proof of a negative Covid test upon arrival in the country.

Vulnerable groups were particularly hard hit by the fines, Walker said, including people with mental or physical health problems or those on low incomes who struggled to pay them.

A lack of legal aid meant many of the accused lacked legal representation, Gibbs added.

“People who don’t understand the nuances and intricacies of the law were rabbits in the headlights” of prosecutors, she said. “Where lawyers did challenge [prosecutions] they very often won, which shows how dodgy the law was.”

The UK government declined to comment. It has previously said that it did not rely on enforcement as the main driver of behaviour, that it had made clear the distinction between “guidance” and law during the health crisis and that it removed legal restrictions as soon as it was safe to do so.

The government also has previously said that the toughest penalties were reserved for those who committed “egregious” breaches of the rules.