A former head cop has spoken of the difficulties of enforcing lockdown restrictions.
Sir Peter Fahy, formerly chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, made the comments speaking to the BBC Radio 4 Today show following the recent leak of former health secretary Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages.
In one of the leaked texts, the former cabinet member is seen to discuss ‘getting heavy’ with police regarding the way in which lockdown requirements were enforced during the pandemic.
Sir Fahy told BBC Radio 4 this morning: ‘I think lots of people in the police service won’t be surprised at the tone of these remarks.
‘There was this constant confusion between what was legislation and what was guidance.’
Sir Fahy said when officers ‘trying to do their best’ were ‘highlighted and misunderstood’, it had caused ‘huge resentment within policing’.
He added: ‘Often it seemed ministers themselves didn’t understand the impact of the legislation.’
Recap: What were the Covid-19 restrictions like in August 2020?
The messages between Mr Hancock and Mr Case were sent on August 28, 2020, just two weeks after a loosening of coronavirus restrictions.
This included the reopening of certain indoor venues, like theatres and concert halls, and the resumption of some ‘close-contact’ services, like tattoo parlours and beauty salons.
However, the government also insisted that people were still not permitted to meet anywhere indoors in groups of more than two households, or to interact socially with people they knew and bumped into in indoor spaces.
People continued to be disallowed from holding or attending parties if these would have made it difficult to maintain social distancing, or to meet outdoors in groups of more than six if those groups came from more than two households.
The new rules also only applied to England, specifically areas where further local restrictions were not additionally in place.
Sir Fahy’s comments refer to an August 2020 exchange between Mr Hancock and Simon Case, who was at that time in his last month as cabinet secretary.
The leaked messages show Mr Case saying: ‘Blimey! Who is actually delivering enforcement?’
Mr Hancock then replies: ‘I think we are going to have to get heavy with the police.’
Mr Hancock’s WhatsApp correspondence is being published by the Daily Telegraph as part of a series of investigations into the handling of the pandemic during his tenure as health secretary.
Around 100,000 private messages from Mr Hancock’s phone were handed to the newspaper by his book ghostwriter, Isabel Oakeshott.
The former cabinet member has said he is ‘hugely disappointed’ by the ‘massive betrayal and breach of trust’ of Ms Oakeshott’s decision to share the messages.
She has since hit back, saying: ‘For someone who’s as intelligent as Matt Hancock to issue a statement saying there is no public interest in these revelations is patently absurd.’
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