Boris Johnson hearing: We don’t think we broke Covid guidance either, say Britons handed lockdown fines

Members of the public who were handed fines for breaching Covid-19 regulations have highlighted how they did not realise they were breaking the guidance, and criticised Boris Johnson as he sought to claim a similar defence in front of MPs.

David Wilson, who was fined £1,000 David Wilson Calypso Caribbean Restaurantat his restaurant, said he would rather go to prison than pay the money “on principle” as he insisted that he was unfairly penalised.

The 58-year-old, who runs Calypso, a Caribbean restaurant in Blackburn, said he had confirmed the event with the local council beforehand and the guests attended in groups of six – in accordance with the rules in May 2021.

He attempted to abide by the rules throughout the pandemic, even handing out free food to members of the local community undergoing palliative care while his kitchen was closed for business.

Mr Wilson took the case to court and won, meaning he ultimately did not have to pay the fine. However,he said it caused him a great deal of stress and put pressure on his restaurant, which was already suffering due to lockdown closures.

Mr Wilson called for Boris Johnson to “lose his seat” as an MP if the Privileges Committee find that he knowingly misled Parliament over Partygate gatherings at Downing Street.

He said hearing about the Downing Street parties made him feel “extremely angry” and tempted to “close [the restaurant] and leave Britain altogether”. He called for all the fines that ordinary people paid to be “overturned”.

David Wilson used his kitchen to make free meals for people undergoing palliative care during lockdown (Photo: David Wilson)

The former prime minister could be suspended from the Commons for 10 days if the seven-strong cross-party Privileges Committee of MPs finds he deliberately misled the House – a step which could ultimately trigger a by-election in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency.

Mr Johnson and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak both faced fixed penalty notices over their part in Downing Street parties during Covid lockdowns, but the former PM has denied intentionally misleading Parliament when denying rules had been broken during his time in office.

Addressing his fine, Mr Johnson said: “There is of course one event for which I – and the current Prime Minister – received fixed penalty notices.

“But it never occurred to me – or I think, the current Prime Minister – at the time, that the event was not in the rules and the guidance.”

He went over what happened during that event, saying he “stood at his desk” and had “a kind of salad” while “a number of officials came in to wish me a happy birthday”.

He told the Committee: “We talked about Covid and what we were doing to beat the pandemic. When I spoke to the Commons, it did not for one second occur to me that this event, the one event for which I was fined, would later be found to be somehow against the rules.

“The same goes for all the events I attended. My belief was that we were following the rules to the best of our ability.”

Hundreds of thousands of fixed penalty notices were handed out to members of the public for breaching Covid-19 regulations.

Ali Lawrence, 53, from York, received a £200 fine for busking on the street in March 2021 – but he did not think he was breaking the rules at the time, which he said were “vague and contradictory”.

He decided to pay the fine within the first two weeks as he did not want to risk getting a criminal record by taking the case to court and losing.

Ali Lawrence, 53, received a £200 fine for busking on the street in March 2021 (Photo: Supplied)

Mr Lawrence thought that he would be allowed to busk on the street, since that was his job and the rules stated people were allowed to travel to their place of work. However, he said the police “came down hard” on him.

He said reading about Partygate made him “very angry” as it was “one rule for them and another rule for the rest of us”. He added it is “flabbergasting” to see Mr Johnson “trying to wriggle out” of accountability for the parties held at No 10 Downing Street.

“If he gets away with it, it’s going to be quite a numbing experience,” he told i.

Lucinda Nicholls, who has represented almost 30 people accused of breaching lockdown regulations, said some of her clients’ livelihoods were destroyed by the fines, even though they turned out to be operating under the rules when the case went to court.

Looking at the dossier on Mr Johnson, she said there appears to have been some “quite specific breaches” that “clearly don’t fall in line with the regulations”.

The managing partner at Nicholls and Nicholls law firm told i: “I think it would be rather embarrassing for the Prime Minister to not know the regulations that he is enforcing on his people.

“I think it would be a huge embarrassment to any government official, who was actively part of creating legislation that was so restricting on individuals and their human rights, to then find that they’re not following their own rules.”

People are still being prosecuted under Covid-19 regulations. Ms Nicholls called for the ongoing cases to be “halted” and all fines that have already been handed out to be “revisited”.

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She said: “The Met Police and the Government are still trying to prosecute people for Covid regulation breaches. I think they need to bring that to a halt. And I think they need to revisit what they’ve done to others.

“When people received a fixed penalty notice, they were advised or in writing that they had no right of appeal. And lots of people were scared for that very reason and just paid the fines. That is money that the Government should not have to spend. That should be returned to those individuals.”

She added: “If they weren’t following the regulations themselves or were confused about their own laws that they created. They shouldn’t think that it’s acceptable to put that enforcement on members of the public.”

Stuart Nolan, chair of the Law Society’s Criminal Law Committee, said: “People that have adhered to the guidance religiously, at a detriment to themselves and their families, will feel that there is a gulf between those that rule and those that are rules. That might cause them concern.

“If you’d been subject to penalties produced by the likes of Boris [Johnson] and his Cabinet through Parliament, and have suffered as a result, you might feel again that it’s somewhat unequal in the way that it’s been approached.

“It’s the old adage – one rule for them, another rule for us. Effectively, the blatant abuse of power and the arrogance of power – that’s what’s coming across to me.”

He said a key lesson from the pandemic is that new laws should be debated properly, and their possible outcomes discussed, rather than emergency legislation being passed in haste.

“If the situation arises where we, as a nation, are forced to make punitive rules quickly then we should actually spend some time debating the outcome and how they might be applied,” he told i.

“At the very best it would seem, particularly at the beginning days of the pandemic, it was not clear to every individual, least of all to those who make rules, what exactly those rules are or the ramifications of them.”