Reality Has “Snapped” as Jail Time for Covid Travel Breach is LONGER Than Some Sex Offences

Reality Has “Snapped” as Jail Time for Covid Travel Breach is LONGER Than Some Sex Offences.

YESTERDAY (February 9), the UK’s Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced that UK and Irish residents returning from coronavirus hotspots face fines of up to £10,000 and 10-year jail sentences if they break new travel rules.

However, today (February 10) former senior judge, Lord Sumption, who sat on the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, outlined in a post in the Daily Telegraph, that the  Health Secretary’s connection with reality had “snapped”.

He said: “Does Mr Hancock really think that non-disclosure of a visit to Portugal is worse than the large number of violent firearms offences or sexual offences involving minors for which the maximum is seven years?”

Former attorney general Dominic Grieve backed up Lord Sumption by stating: “The maximum sentence of 10 years for what is effectively a regulatory breach sounds in the circumstances unless it can be justified, extraordinarily high.”

Sir Geoffrey Cox, who served in the same post, added: “I get that the Secretary of State wants to show that this is serious, but you do have to have regard to the overall balance of sentencing policy and law.”

It appears that some people in the travel industry have also reacted negatively to the news with tour operator AITO accusing the UK government of scaremongering, stating that they are trying to “frighten” people with extreme measures: “A 10-year prison sentence seems wildly OTT. People who kill and badly maim others don’t get that long in prison.

“They are trying to frighten people, in our view – they should have been stricter early on.”

The backlash has caused some government members to leap to the defence of the decisions, with Transport Secretary Grant Shapps explaining that the measures are to protect the public from new Covid mutations entering the UK from other countries.

“What we’re dealing with now are the variants and, with variants, we cannot risk it in these final stages – where we’ve got the vaccine rolled out – that we might end up with a difficulty from variations, although we think so far that we’ll be able to take care of them through the vaccines,” he told Sky News.

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