Stores told to call police if customers don’t wear a mask
SHOPS should call the police if customers refuse to wear a face covering, Matt Hancock warned yesterday.
The Health Secretary said making masks mandatory are needed to protect shop workers who have a higher rate of death from coronavirus than the general population.
Shoppers who fail to comply with the new rules – which kick in next Friday – could be hit with a £100 fine.
But last night businesses called the plan “utterly ludicrous” and police said it was ridiculous to expect them to enforce the new rule.
Speaking in Parliament, Mr Hancock said shopkeepers “can refuse entry” to people not wearing coverings and police enforcement would be the “last resort”.
He told MPs: “Should an individual without an exemption refuse to wear a face covering, a shop can refuse them entry and can call the police if people refuse to comply.
“The police have formal enforcement powers and can issue a fine.”
He said wearing face coverings would give people the confidence to hit the high street.
He said: “We want to give people more confidence to shop safely and enhance protections for those who work in shops.
“Sales assistants, cashiers and security guards have suffered disproportionally in this crisis.”
He said deaths among shop assistants is 75 per cent higher for men and 60 per cent higher for women than the general population and the policy will help protect those more at risk because of their jobs.
Children under 11 and those with disabilities will be exempt.
Labour’s Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, criticised the decision to delay the introduction of compulsory masks until July 24, but Mr Hancock accused Labour of making the issue a “party political football”.
Yesterday, two senior ministers offered different takes on the Government’s thinking, with Liz Truss visiting a Pret a
Manger in Westminster with a mask while Michael Gove chose not to wear one.
Adam Marshall, of the British Chambers of Commerce, was supportive of the new rules around face coverings, saying they would help to “restore consumer confidence” and encourage more people to head into their town centres to shop.
“Restoring consumer confidence to use towns and city centres safely is enormously important to the restart and recovery of the UK economy,” he said. And taking measures, sensible measures like the use of face masks in enclosed businesses, is one step that can help rebuild that confidence.”
Ken Marsh, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers in London, warned over the law’s enforcement as he called for shopkeepers to “step up to the plate and take some responsibility”.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday: “It will be nigh-on impossible for
enforcement because you won’t have a police officer on every shop door.
“If a shopkeeper calls the police because someone hasn’t got a mask on, they haven’t got the power to detain them so that person can just walk away.
“We’ll be driving round and round London looking for people who weren’t wearing masks. It’s absolutely absurd.”
And the move has sparked some confusion among retailers.
Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail
Consortium, said “more clarity was needed” on how to protect shop workers from aggressive customers refusing to wear face coverings.
Peter Cowgill, chief executive at JD Sports suggested his stores will offer face masks to anyone who came in to shop not wearing one, but said it will not be for his staff to enforce the law.
“The guidance so far is that our store colleagues are not really to get involved and it’s a police matter to enforce rather than for them to get involved in any potential public disturbances,” he told the BBC.
Mr Cowgill also criticised the delay to introducing the measure, saying: “It will have an impact on consumer confidence.” He blamed ministers for “inconsistencies and indecisiveness”.
Martin Hewitt, chairman of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), said: “As with other coronavirus regulations, we will follow an approach of engaging, explaining, encouraging and only enforcing where encouragement has been unsuccessful.”
New data has shown that nobody in England and Wales was fined by police for breaching quarantine rules after arriving from abroad. And only 10 tickets were handed out to passengers for not wearing face coverings on public transport, figures released by the NPCC showed.
Ministers have also refused to rule out mandatory face coverings at work.
When asked if the mandatory mask rule would be extended to offices, George Eustice, environment secretary told BBC Radio 4: “At the moment we take one step at a time and we’ve taken the view in this next step that we should make it mandatory in retail environments.”