This has been a disastrous week for trust in British politics. We deserve better from our elected representatives.
Too often Parliament does nothing when Ministers mislead the House of Commons and fail to correct the record. If MPs want to be trusted, they have to stand up for the honesty they and we are owed.
Misleading the House can be a mistake but it can also be a scandal. The way MPs put up with it is a scandal. Every MP of every party needs to stand up for honesty in public life and be prepared to challenge their own side when necessary.
Will, Chief Executive
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Following reports of an alleged Downing Street Christmas party in the midst of last winter’s coronavirus regulations, a clip of Dominic Raab has been widely shared. Talking to the BBC, the Justice Secretary claimed that police “don’t normally” investigate alleged offences that took place a year earlier.
As many have pointed out, if we take this comment at face value then it is clearly inaccurate. There are a number of recent cases in which police have opened or reopened investigations on either historic reports of a crime or alleged offences that took place in the past.
But what about breaches of Covid regulations specifically? According to the law, police technically can prosecute these retrospectively, but past examples have generally shown that police have not taken this position.
The Metropolitan Police has stated "it is our policy not to routinely investigate retrospective breaches of the Covid-19 regulations.” Indeed, in the similarly high-profile instances of Dominic Cummings and Matt Hancock’s alleged breaches, the police chose not to pursue retrospective action.
But that’s not to say definitively that the police can’t －or won’t－ in this instance. We’ve looked into exactly what the law says about retrospectively investigating alleged coronavirus regulation breaches.
Both Dr Hilary Jones and Lorraine Kelly got the latest Covid-19 hospital figures wrong during her show on ITV on Monday morning. The actor and musician Martin Kemp then made the same mistake on the show on Tuesday.
They claimed that 90% of people currently in hospital with Covid have not been vaccinated. In fact, the latest data for England suggests that it’s more like 36%.
It’s possible that Dr Jones, Ms Kelly and Mr Kemp had been incorrectly referring to figures for Covid patients receiving intensive or other specialist care, since there is some evidence that most of these are unvaccinated.
Overall, vaccination is highly protective against severe Covid, reducing people’s chance of being admitted to hospital with the disease by more than 90%.
However, a very large share of the UK’s population has now been vaccinated, especially those most at risk, meaning that the small fraction of vaccinated people who still become seriously ill are numerous enough to make up a majority of hospital admissions.
