Two Years: Conservative Govt Expected to Extend Emergency Powers Until March 2022

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - MAY 06: Two police officers walk past posters on Sauchiehall Street du
Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
Victoria Friedman

The British government is set to extend the Coronavirus Act for a further six months until March 2022 — two years to the month that the ’emergency’ law was passed.

On March 23rd, 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the first of many lockdowns to be imposed on the UK — the first of three in England — with the Coronavirus Act 2020 receiving Royal Assent on March 25th after being fast-tracked through parliament in just four sitting days.

The emergency law has temporary provisions meaning it expires every six months unless renewed, as the government had done before, with the government signalling it was preparing to renew the Coronavirus Act in the autumn, maintaining most of the temporary powers until March 2022.

Prime Minister Johnson’s spokesman told The Guardian on Monday: “It would obviously be irresponsible to allow all temporary provisions to expire. These are provisions that would, if removed, take away the government’s ability to protect renters from eviction, for example, or to give sick pay to those self-isolating from day one.”

He added: “So it’s important that we take a proportionate approach to the Coronavirus Act because there are elements that do still provide protections for the public.”

The prime minister is likely to face opposition from lockdown-sceptic Conservative MPs in the House of Commons, with one government insider telling the Financial Times amidst similar reports last week: “The Coronavirus Act is going to be one of the trickier bills to pass. We’re gearing up for a fight with our own MPs, who are going to be reluctant to support it.”

Former Brexiteer secretary and lockdown sceptic Conservative MP David Davis had on Monday called for every law passed under the act to be repealed, saying:  “I was the first person to raise the red flag on the emergency right back in the beginning and I still take the same view. They no longer need an extension.

“In fact, it’s just the opposite, we should have a freedom bill to revoke every law passed under the emergency act because most of them, people don’t even know about it, ministers just did it.”

Since March 2020, some lawmakers and other senior figures warned that the measures represented a threat to freedom, including former UK Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption, who likened the expanded powers to a “police state” in which “the government can issue orders or express preferences with no legal authority, and the police enforce minister’s wishes”.

The following months saw British police forces enacting the draconian lockdown and social distancing measures, with the Crown Prosecution Service finding in March 2021 — the anniversary of the measures — that all prosecutions brought under the Coronavirus Act had been unlawful.

On Tuesday, the government denied media reports that it was planning a two-week “firebreak” lockdown in late October. Insiders reportedly had claimed the government was considering the plans if hospital admissions for the Chinese coronavirus continue to rise.

A Downing Street spokesman had said that it was “not true the government is planning a lockdown or firebreak around the October half term”.

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