Remember the stupidity of Matt Hancock's fines for breaching Covid regulations, fixed penalties which rose to £10.000 regardless of ability to pay? A number of these have been issued to teenagers and matters have come to a head with one of them.
An 18 year old about to start his career, he'd invited 22 friends to join him at his Manchester house at a time when gatherings were limited to 30. As so often happens with such young events, a few more turned up and gate crashed, the police got wind of this and turned up. They were of the opinion that there were more than 30 present , though don't seem to have made an exact count, but regardless issued the 18 year old a £10,000 fixed penalty.
The legal position with such penalties is ridiculous. There is an impossibly short time limit for settlement before risk of imprisonment and there is no right of appeal against the penalty. At the time of it being issued one can opt to go to court and fight the case instead but few have the presence of mind to do so and once the penalty is issued one can't change one's mind.
Of course this 18 year old was very concerned since once not paid on time it becomes a criminal offence and a criminal record would threaten his intended career. By then even the police themselves became concerned at what they had done, so they rescinded the £10,000 fine and replaced it with a £400 fixed penalty.
You might approve of that and it certainly showed more common sense than Matt Hancock has ever been capable of, but I don't approve at all.
Firstly the whole principle of fixed penalties is wrong since it constitutes the prosecutor then determining guilt and finally determining the sentence. Nowhere else in our law can that happen, and having no right of appeal after the penalty is issued just makes this all the more inhumane and unjust.
And in this case the fact that the police have decided how much the penalty should be is also fundamentally wrong, despite their humane intentions. The whole point of parliament setting up the Crown Prosecution Service was to separate the police from the decision to prosecute and also from the court justice process since the CPS prosecute, not the police in major matters. And a £10,000 fine with a threat of a prison sentence and criminal record for an 18 year old is very much a major matter which should be beyond police powers to decide.
And of course at the core of the matter is a system that allows a minister like Matt Hancock to make such an arbitrary ill thought out order without any reference to parliament for MPs to judge the suitability of the decision or have the authority to be able overrule it.
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