POLITICIANS AND peers from the House of Lords have suggested that all fines issued in England during the COVID-19 pandemic must be reviewed.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights highlighted that 27% of defendants had been charged incorrectly, according to a review by the Crown Prosecution Service in February.

Over 85,000 fines have been issued in England since the beginning of the pandemic.

Coronavirus regulations have changed at least 65 times since March last year, and according to the joint committee on human rights, they have been “muddled, discriminatory and unfair”.

In July 2020, a National Police Chiefs’ Council report found that people from ethnic minority groups were 1.6 times more likely to be fined than white people.

Men aged between 18-34 were two times as likely to be fined than their white counterparts.

If you receive a COVID-19 fixed penalty fine, you can either pay a penalty of between £200 and £10,000, or choose to face criminal prosecution.

Harriet Harman who chairs the committee said: “Swift action to make restrictions effective is essential in the face of this terrible virus. But the government needs to ensure that rules are clear, enforcement is fair and that mistakes in the system can be rectified. None of that is the case in respect of COVID-19 fixed penalty notices.

“This means we’ve got an unfair system with clear evidence that young people, those from certain ethnic minority backgrounds, men and the most socially deprived are most at risk. Whether people feel the fixed penalty notice is deserved or not, those who can afford it are likely to pay a penalty to avoid criminality. Those who can’t afford to pay face a criminal record along with all the resulting consequences for their future development. The whole process disproportionately hits the less well-off and criminalises the poor over the better-off.”