Family Christmas gatherings that breach Covid rules will be broken up, PCCs warn

Christmas family celebrations are liable to be broken up if they contravene coronavirus restrictions, police chiefs have warned.

David Jamieson, the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), said his force would investigate reports of rule-breaking over Christmas if the region remained under Tier 2 restrictions and officers would, if necessary, enter homes and separate households.

"If we think there's large groups of people gathering where they shouldn't be, then police will have to intervene," Mr Jamieson told The Telegraph. "If, again, there's flagrant breaking of the rules, then the police would have to enforce.

"It's not the police's job to stop people enjoying their Christmas. However, we are there to enforce the rules that the Government makes, and if the Government makes those rules then the Government has to explain that to the public.

"The police are there to enforce it and keep people safe – they're not there to make judgments about whether people should enjoy themselves or not."

Concluding that Christmas was going to be "very difficult", Mr Jamieson said: "Remember that you've got Eid and Diwali as well, in which there are similar expectations from families to be mingling together closely, just as for Christmas."

Under the rules for areas in Tier 2 and Tier 3, people must not meet up indoors with anybody outside their household or support bubble.

Last week, Boris Johnson said it was his "ambition" to allow families to celebrate Christmas together, but Government scientific adviser Sir Jeremy Farrar has said it is unlikely to be the "usual celebration" of "families coming together".

Jane Kennedy, the PCC for the Merseyside region, currently under Tier 3 restrictions, also confirmed that police would investigate reports of illegal gatherings in people's homes over the Christmas period.

She said: "If that's reported, the police will investigate, yes. If the restrictions remain in place there won't be the usual family gatherings, and therefore if a family breaks those rules and has a family gathering they will stand out because the majority of people are complying."

However, the former Tory leader Sir Iain described the idea of police intervening by entering homes and separating households as "utter madness", saying: "We've gone too far, way too far, and we've got to stop it. We're turning into a kind of police state.  It's bad for the police and bad for the public. The police police by consent – this is way past consent."

The three-tier Covid system for England was introduced by Mr Johnson earlier this month to "simplify and standardise" rules while avoiding a full lockdown of the kind imposed in March.

Mr Jamieson predicted that it was "very likely" there could be civil unrest in the West Midlands in the near future, adding that the "turning point for a lot of people" could be if they are made unemployed when the furlough scheme ends later this month.  He said his force was on "heavy alert for the unexpected".

"We're sitting on a time bomb here," he added. "We're getting very near the stage where you could see a considerable explosion of frustration and energy. Things are very on the edge in a lot of communities and it wouldn't take very much to spark off unrest, riots, damage."

He compared the situation to the riots of 2011, which were sparked by the police shooting of Mark Duggan in London but quickly spread, saying: "That just exploded – looting of shops, smashing of property. People who have never been involved in crime before in their life suddenly exploded."

The spark in this case, he said, could be the police enforcing coronavirus restrictions in a way "that's seen to be heavy-handed".

He added that his colleagues around the country were also concerned about potential civil unrest, particularly in urban areas such as Manchester, London and Merseyside. However, Ms Kennedy disagreed, saying: "I don't feel that we are on the brink of serious disorder, not at all. I don't hear it from the meetings that I attend with the police."

Mr Jamieson criticised the Government's handling of the coronavirus, calling it "a complete cock-up from the beginning" and saying the situation could have been handled better at a local level.

He added: "I think it has been calamitously bad from the Government – total disarray, complete disorganisation, ignoring the local networks which were there already which were able to do much of this work.

"The Government's always given the view and appearance of making the rules up at the last minute for the next headline and that's not good. They've been forced into endless U-turns and forced into endless criticism which is very justified.

"Because the Government have just announced things through the media, it hasn't given any time for preparation of the police forces to get the information out to their officers in time for them to do the enforcement. That has been a constant frustration for the police, that they often know what the rules are after the public seem to know."

Mr Jamieson said it "hasn't given much confidence in policing, it's a frustration and it doesn't give you time to think and prepare and it just gives you a feeling that your views aren't valued" and called the Test and Trace system, which Mr Johnson claimed in March would be "world-beating", a "complete flop – one of the worst in the world, I would imagine".