Give police more power to enforce virus rules, MP says

A YORKSHIRE MP has urged the Government to give the police more powers to enforce coronavirus regulations as he revealed he had confronted youths in a shopping centre for not wearing masks.

Speaking in the debate on the new lockdown in the Commons yesterday afternoon, Labour MP for Sheffield South East Clive Betts raised a number of points as MPs passed the legislation required for the third national lockdown. They voted for it by 524 votes to 16.

Giving the example of wearing face masks, which he said was “very important”, he said: “I met a group of young people, saw them in Meadowhall shopping centre the other day, walking along saying ‘ oh we’ll just tell them we’ve got asthma if anyone asks us’.

“We need the police to have the powers to make people wear a face mask and be required to produce evidence of an exemption if they have one.”

Giving another example he said: “Recently Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire were in Tier 4, Sheffield was in Tier 3, people were driving over the border to Meadowhall and Drakehouse [ retail park] to do their shopping.

“The police had no powers under the rules to enforce the requirement that people shouldn’t travel over the border for those purposes.”

Mr Betts’ intervention came after Health Secretary Matt Hancock told MPs he does not expect a full national lockdown to be in place until March 31, although he failed to guarantee MPs the final say.

Mr Hancock faced pleas from Conservative backbenchers to outline the road map to ease restrictions across England, as he moved regulations which would allow lockdown to run for three months.