Will our party-loving government pay back lockdown fines?

“Nobody warned me that it was against the rules,” said the Prime Minister in his latest attempt to exonerate himself from Partygate. Just when we thought the excuses couldn’t get any weaker, the PM attempted to claim ignorance of the very rules he makes and implements for a living. 

Unlike the Prime Minister and his government, many people across England have receipts to remember the rules by. More than 100,000 fines have been handed out for Covid-related offences such as breaking lockdown or not wearing a mask, and 371 people have been fined the maximum penalty of £10,000 for hosting gatherings of more than 30 people. Remind me, how many staff gathered for “socially distanced drinks” in the Number 10 garden?

A Guardian investigation discovered that in 2020 alone, UK university students were fined a total of £170,000 for Covid rule breaches. University is designed for socialising and making friends, and yet no compromises were made for young people (the majority of whom were not at risk) struggling to make friends without breaching rules. Instead, they were slapped with fines from £60 to £10,000. The average student has a total budget of £187 a week. The government enforced rules designed to best suit themselves as middle class and middle-aged individuals, and yet still failed to follow the rules. So how could we have ever expected teenagers to do the same?

There is a multitude of reasons why people broke the lockdown rules, many of which centre around loneliness and concern for mental health. Yesterday, the courts correspondent for the Evening Standard shared a Twitter thread of the paperwork and mitigation pleas of those prosecuted for breaking Covid restrictions last year. It reads as a sobering reminder of the rules Boris Johnson finds so easy to forget, and how fear and frustration gave way to an almost complete loss of empathy at the height of the pandemic.

Within the thread there are heartbreaking stories; one man from Ilford hosted a few friends to mark another friend’s death and was threatened with a £10,000 fine. If you’re earning over £150,000 per year like the Prime Minister you might take this in your stride, but for the average person, it could be a life-ruining amount of money: “I am only making £8,000 pa,” the man wrote, “and cannot afford to pay £10,000.” 

Another 66-year-old man was confronted by police at his allotment where he had gone to collect greens and was fined £100 for talking to his friends whilst there. “I am a pensioner struggling to pay my way and in debt already,” he wrote. What does it say about our society that we penalise lonely pensioners whilst our governing body flouts the same rules without a second thought?

If it wasn’t his job to lead the country and enforce the restrictions, I could sympathise with some of Boris Johnson’s confusion. After all, the rules chopped and changed constantly throughout 2020 and 2021, getting more ridiculous and draconian by the minute. Let’s not forget the 10 pm curfew, the rule of six, and the no drinking without a substantial meal rule. But when one pub landlord was found to be serving drinks to customers who were not eating, he was found to be breaking lockdown rules, despite the fact he had served them Scotch eggs (“A Scotch egg that is served as a substantial meal, that is a substantial meal,” said Matt Hancock at the time). When the pub landlord admitted to having gone off ministerial advice and not having read the legislation he was slapped with a £1,390 bill. For the government, confusion towards the rules is an excuse, for the desperate hospitality owner, it is an admission of guilt. 

We might be heading towards a “post-Covid” future in England, but when we look back on the past, the way people were treated in this country during the pandemic will put us firmly on the wrong side of history. It is not too late to try and make up for it. Perhaps a £200 fine per attendee and a £10,000 fine for the event organiser of the Downing Street parties could be used to repay the people fined throughout 2020 and 2021. A democracy cannot be run by hypocrisy after all.