It is time to end Covid prosecutions

Our courts are facing unprecedented strain. It is taking many months and sometimes years for criminal prosecutions to come to trial. Fraud cases are now being listed for 2027.

Yet five years after Covid restrictions were first imposed and over three years after all controls were lifted, cases for alleged Covid violations are still coming to court. The Telegraph has disclosed that around 130 people have faced criminal hearings in the past six months, including 38 this year.

Many of these prosecutions are for seemingly inadvertent breaches of the law. Dodi Wexler, an American expat, flew back to London in 2021 with her three teenage sons after a Christmas break in Massachusetts. She had booked a day-five Covid test for herself and her family, when she should have booked day-two and day-eight tests. Mrs Wexler then bought the correct tests as instructed by Border Force for £840. More than a year and a half later she received fixed-penalty notices fining her a total of £4,000. This was eventually reduced at a magistrates’ hearing last November to £400.

Mrs Wexler is not alone. A 60-year-old British man returning on business from Paris to London on the Eurostar says he took a Covid test before boarding the train, but by the time he arrived at St Pancras his phone had run out of battery. As a result, he could not show his certificate. Late last year he received notification from Border Force that he was being fined £1,295. The case was dropped this January.

What possible purpose do such prosecutions serve? There is a great reluctance by the authorities to admit that our approach to lockdown was ludicrously heavy handed. It is surely time to draw a line under this unhappy episode and free up our courts to tackle real crime.