The health department has recommended that police be given access to people’s health data to crack down on quarantine breaches. When asked about this on SKY News this morning, Environment Secretary George Eustice said that the pandemic had forced the government to take “draconian steps.”
Speaking to SKY’s Gillian Joseph, Eustice said; “Generally with the whole pandemic, we’ve had to take some quite extraordinary steps, very draconian steps that are a big infringement on people’s liberty, asking them to stay at home, telling them that they can’t meet and can’t go out. But none of us want these restrictions to stay in place a moment longer. We are seeing high infection rates with this new virulent strain and there is pressure on the NHS…..and that does mean we do to have intervene with draconian measures and we make no apology for that.”
Yesterday afternoon, at a Downing Street press briefing, Home Secretary Priti Patel compared people who breach lockdown measures and don’t quarantine when told to do so, to people who left their lights on during The Blitz. Patel also said that in future, anyone attending a house party would be fined £800. The Police are delighted. Lincolnshire Assistant Chief Constable Kerrin Wilson said this morning; “We see very selfish people out there who care only about themselves and their own pursuits. They are not taking heed of the restrictions. I welcome the increase in the fines.”
Irish journalist and broadcaster John Waters, who along with fellow journalist Gemma O’Doherty is challenging the constitutionality of the lockdown in the Irish courts, told me on The Richie Allen Show yesterday, that we are all now effectively living in a police state. Speaking of Ireland he said; “The idea that we have descended in ten months from a country where citizens, under the protection of the constitution, have the right to go where they please….we have gone from that to being essentially a police state, literally a police state.”
