A new rule being introduced on September 28 will mean people will be fined if they do not self-isolate if they test positive for coronavirus, or are contacted by Test and Trace.
New fines for those breaching self-isolation rules will start at £1,000 – bringing this in line with the penalty for breaking quarantine after international travel – but could increase to up to £10,000 for repeat offences and for the most egregious breaches, including for those preventing others from self-isolating.
This could include business owners who threaten self-isolating staff with redundancy if they do not come to work.
A payment of £500 will be made to those on lower incomes who cannot work from home and have lost earnings as a result.
A number of steps will be taken to make sure that people are complying with the rules, these include:
- NHS Test and Trace call handlers making regular contact with those self-isolating, with the ability to escalate any suspicion of non-compliance to Local Authorities and local police;
- Using police resources to check compliance in highest incidence areas and in high-risk groups, based on local intelligence;
- Investigating and prosecuting high-profile and egregious cases of non-compliance; and
- Acting on instances where third parties have identified others who have tested positive, but are not self-isolating.
Just under 4 million people who are in receipt of benefits in England will be eligible for the Test and Trace £500 payment, which will be available to those who are required to self-isolate from 28 September.
Local Authorities will be working to set up these self-isolation support schemes by 12 October. Those who start to self-isolate from 28 September will receive backdated payments once the scheme is set up in their Local Authority.
The Prime Minister said:”The best way we can fight this virus is by everyone following the rules and self-isolating if they’re at risk of passing on coronavirus. And so nobody underestimates just how important this is, new regulations will mean you are legally obliged to do so if you have the virus or have been asked to do so by NHS Test and Trace.
“People who choose to ignore the rules will face significant fines. We need to do all we can to control the spread of this virus, to prevent the most vulnerable people from becoming infected, and to protect the NHS and save lives.”
The rule comes as cases have again started to rise in the UK, with 4,442 new positive cases reported across the UK yesterday (September 19).
The R rate – how widely an infected person can spread the virus – has also risen above the desired 1 or below mark to 1.1-1.4
The latest growth rate range for the UK is+2% to +7%per day
An R number between 1.1 and 1.4 means that on average every 10 people infected will infect between 11 and 14 other people.
A growth rate between +2% and +7% means the number of new infections is growing by 2% to 7% every day.
The rule follows the introduction a ban on gatherings of more than six people in homes, parks, pubs and restaurants which came ito force on Monday, September 14.
One is reminded of the ludicrous Blair Labour idea in the 2000’s for police to march people found drunk & misbehaving in public to cash-points to extract money-despite the difficulties of a drunk individual remembering their pin & that they have likely just peed their cash up the wall.
Most of the people breaking this order are not going to have 10 grand sitting in their bank account, nor are they likely to have 10 grands worth of property or possessions, they are likely to be on a low income. So what then? Lock them up? The jails are overcrowded as it is & how long would lock them up for? Life is severely restricted as it is & another full lockdown is inevitable in the coming months-so if they face a choice between being under house arrest for a fortnight, or spending 2-4 weeks in a jail cell what is the real deterrent?
Just another stupid gimmick that is unenforceable. Wonder what wheeze Buffoon Boris & Cummings will come up with next exactly following on from the support bubbles, rule of six & circuit break silliness?
The fines begin at £1000, not £10,000.
And you think most people who will be flouting the order have a grand in their bank account?
So basically the NHS Test & Trace will be randomly spying on people & then informing the police if the phone isn’t answered? So if you are on the toilet & unable to answer you will likely be deemed to have broken the law without a trial & subject to a 10k fine or being locked up? You would think the NHS would have better things to do-like not letting babies die & then covering it up for one, seeing how NHS whistleblowers have been treated by the NHS it is rather ironic that now they are happy to snitch to the government & the police.
Using police resources-is this the same police that have for instance by all accounts here & elsewhere been ignoring the large public gatherings in Cliftonville since March evne during full lockdown? Now these officers are suddenly going to go in & sort things out?
High profile & egregious-does the former mean finding a few ‘famous’ people to prosecute for publicity? Does the latter mean in reality the police are not going to bother unless the people keep doing it?
Third parties-ah yes, back to good old days when a neighbour with a grudge said the person was a witch & got them tortured & executed. Or more recently Senator Joe McCarthy with his reds under the bed witch hunt that saw people being falsely accused-often by others to take the heat off of themselves & lives ruined. This really is becoming very much like 1984 isn’t it? The author of that tome himself was ironically in real life shopping supposed communists(usually without having any real evidence they even were to the authorities)all while writing that book. So basically any Kevin or Karen who don’t like you can a spurious report to the grass em up hotline & get you in trouble when you haven’t done anything wrong? Who exactly is going to be handling these calls? What is their level of training? What is going to be burden of evidence exactly? Seeing as the overwhelming majority of prosecutions bought since March have been thrown out this seems another huge waste of time & money.
If things are that serious they won’t just phone once, surely?
Steve, you need to take some tablets. I imagine that were T&T to phone and not get a reply, they would phone again (and again) or leave a message asking the person to phone back. Only as a last resort will the police be asked to intervene.
The whole point is to encourage behaviour in us that will help limit the spread of CV. Unfortunately, there are far too many of us not taking this seriously enough, and people are dying as a consequence.
Yes, you imagine-but as usual with these headline grabbing policies/Torygraph reading vote winners where is the detail? Will they & do they have the resources to keep phoning? Will it be a three strikes & you are out rule, or it is just once & then pass your details on to the police?
We saw how many of the police behaved during Lockdown-spying on what people were putting in their trolleys in certain areas under the guise of making sure people were only buying essential items-even though there was/is no law on what you can buy, hassling lone people sitting on their own, with nobody else anywhere near them, reading a book in huge parks & making them move on, one officer stopping some people & eventually telling one of them on film that he will just make something up to get him if need be. How will the police be handling this power? Because swathes of them acted more like the Stasi earlier this year.
Maybe the government ought to look at themselves-sitting in parliament in close proximity against all arguments & reason. Our esteemed leader caught Coronavirus almost certainly as a result of his close contact in parliament-once even stopping at speakers chair & trapping many of his colleagues & of course his boasting he was going round shaking Covid patients hands & then shaking the hands of doctors & nurses. The same leader who while the beaches were being flooded on hot days was saying how great it was & how the opposition were just party poopers trying to kill tourism/fun.
Or of course their idea of staggering of re-openings being not even enough time to collate data to see what effect it was having before the next sector is re-opened, sending all the kids(walking Petri dishes) back to school & surprise surprise the kids & teachers are coming down with it in their droves within weeks. We are going to see waves anyway-the weather is turning colder now, we are heading into the flu & bug season & people will be coughing & sneezing everywhere-including public transport. Yes people are acting like idiots-but what idiot decided to reopen the nightclubs & pubs?
Your analysis is spot on. Too little action, too late.
Now we have to face the consequences.
Infection rates have been rising steadily since June, and exponentially in recent weeks.
And what did the government do?
Told us it was ok to go back to work. Indeed, urged us to do so in order to keep Costa and Pret etc afloat.
Told us it was safe to go back to school.
Gave us £10 a head to eat out in restaurants.
Changed the message about keeping 2 m to a vaguely meaningless statement about keeping alert.
And, in response to the impending second wave, what do they do? Shut pubs at 10 p.m.
Brilliant.
Nevertheless, I think that people who breach quarantine should be hammered, because (like the bloke in Bolton) they put the wellbeing of hundreds of us in jeopardy.
Excellent. A little bit of forward thinking for a change.
Not only will those who test positive have some incentive to stay at home – all those who are clogging up the system with unnecessary tests may think twice about having one in the first place.
I think you will find the big problem with the testing is government incompetence & inaction(like sitting on their behinds for two months until mid March)rather than mass testing of time wasters. As for the ‘incentive’ you surely realise that the majority of people who will break this ruling far from being wealthy are the poorest of society, the government will not be able to collect any money from them because they don’t have a thousand pounds in their bank account, let alone 10 thousand pounds. So what happens then & what is the deterrent exactly? The only option then is prison & the choice of 2 weeks in a jail cell with free food & drink etc, or 2 weeks stuck at home starving or having to buy online groceries to be delivered-if you can get a slot that is.
I would say that chaps like the one in Bolton who refused to quarantine after flying back from a holiday certainly have the wherewithal to stump up £1000.
No question, but your typical council estate urchin doesn’t.
No need to insult people who live in council housing!Thatcher’s government brought in the right to buy and immorally prevented councils from spending the money they got from selling council housing on replacemnts. No government in England has rescinded the right to buy. That’s partly why there is such a shortage of low-rent housing with secure tenancies.