Tough Covid penalties not yet in law due to ‘pressures on printing’

By Rebecca Black, PA

Tougher penalties agreed by the Stormont Executive for breaches of coronavirus restrictions are not yet law due to a delay in printing enforcement notices.

The Executive agreed on October 8 to raise the minimum fine to £200, and fines on conviction up to £10,000.

Over a month later, Justice Minister Naomi Long said the regulations “should be laid shortly” in the Assembly to become law.

DUP MLA Gary Middleton pressed her for a timeframe, describing the tougher penalties as “of utmost importance” to suppress the spread of Covid-19.

“We also want to ensure that we can get our economy back open again, so enforcement and penalties are very important,” he said.

Mrs Long revealed the regulations will not be laid in the Assembly until the police are ready to enforce them, describing delays in printing enforcement notices.

“It is important that we do so as quickly as possible, however the timing of this will unfortunately be led largely by the time it will take for the PSNI to be able to police the new enforcement notices,” she told MLAs during Justice Minister questions.

“There have been some issues around delays in that because of the pressure on the bespoke printing that is required for those enforcement notices.

“However, as soon as those enforcement notices are ready to be able to be rolled out across the police service, we have the regulations ready to be laid in the chamber.”

Assistant Chief Constable Alan Todd said police anticipate delivery of the new enforcement notices “in the near future”.

“This was followed by a drafting process which included the creation of new offences, new offence processing codes and other administrative actions required to give effect to any new penalties under the regulations. This work was conducted by departments within the NI Executive,” he said.

“When the above process was completed, the Police Service was able to confirm the design for the new penalty notices and place the order with suppliers. The tickets are produced by a specialist printer within a defined production and delivery schedule and we anticipate delivery in the near future.

“All partners including the Department of Justice and the Executive Office have been kept fully informed of the timeframes involved.”

In October, ministers agreed to replace the £60 fixed penalty notice which could increase on each detection with a single tariff of £200.

Three other offences will be punishable on conviction by a fine of up to £10,000, or attract a fixed penalty notice starting at £1,000 and going up to a maximum of £10,000.

The first of these offences is not closing a business as required under the regulations.

Two other new offences are to be introduced – breaching the early closing requirements for hospitality and not implementing measures to maintain social distancing.