The Coronavirus Act that gave the Government the excuse to do anything they liked under the guise of an 'emergency' will be extended indefinitely.
Parliament are set to vote on whether to renew the Coronavirus Act later this month, but as there is no opposition in the Commons to their dictatorship they are certain to get their way.
The vote comes a year and a half after it was first introduced to grant ’emergency’ powers to the Government. A clause within the Act means that it will automatically lapse in March 2022, but this will be amended in coming months as it has been in Scotland's version of the law.
The Times reports: Ministers are preparing for a fight with anti-lockdown backbench Conservative MPs over the Coronavirus Act, which handed the Government sweeping emergency powers in March 2020.
The legislation includes lifting restrictions on public bodies, such as limits on school class sizes, and allows the police to force those suspected of having the virus into self-isolation. …
When parliament last voted on the act, five months ago, the then Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, said he could not rule out a further extension but said his own preference was for it not to be renewed.
But ministers will argue that emergency powers are still required for another six months, despite limited restrictions in place at the moment, in light of potential challenges ahead this winter. Officials at the Department for Health and Social Care said the extension of the legislation was necessary because coronavirus cases across the U.K. were currently running high, hospitalisations were rising and a difficult flu season was expected. Ministers are also braced for a surge of cases when schools return to England in the next week.
One Government insider said the Government had no choice but to keep the legislation in place. “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.” 30 Tory MPs rebelled in March’s vote to renew the act and the rebels believe that the number will be higher this month.
Mark Harper, the Conservative MP who Chairs the influential Covid Recovery Group of lockdown sceptics, said there was no need to renew the legislation which contained “the most draconian detention powers in modern British legal history”, citing the provisions for indefinite detention.
“Our vaccine roll-out has been a huge success. We have seen a dramatic and welcome fall in people suffering from serious disease and death from Covid as a result,” he said.
“We are going to have to learn to live with this virus, and retaining sweeping powers of detention in the Coronavirus Act is not consistent with this. What justification can there be for extending these measures?”
But make no mistake, this is all just theatre. Once governments gain power, they never freely give them up. Governments are about control, and no government in any country in the world has actively given back powers to its people once they've been obtained. This is the same mechanism dictators throughout history have used to their strengthened power over the people. Time to wake up Britain.
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One of the most alarming things about the scamdemic is how supposed 'democratic' governments have enthusiastically granted themselves ’emergency’ powers. The powers , suspend civil rights – and elections – so that they might better deal with what they assure us, is a threat to our survival. Governments doing this have faced virtually no opposition from legislatures, attempts to restrain political leaders through the courts have been largely unsuccessful and the media has, for the most part, failed to hold them to account.
A few lone voices, such as former Supreme Court Judge Lord Sumption warned that these types of powers are never withdrawn after the emergency has ended, history tells us that, repeatedly. They rapidly become permanent, and are soon used to control the public in everyday life, with the original purpose long since forgotten. Take Pub opening hours for instance, 10.30 closing times were brought in by a tea-total puritan prime minister Lloyd George in 1915 who was convinced that the factory workers were all drunks not pulling their weight in the war effort so enforced strict opening hours to curb their drunken behaviour, those laws remained in place until the 1990s, some 80 years after the war had ended and it took another act of parliament to finally assign them to history.
Governments awarding themselves what amounts to 'total and unchallenged control' over the people invariably claim that these emergency powers are just temporary, and once the crisis has ended that they will assign them to the bin of history. So far not a single country on earth has dissolved those powers, the ones that put an end date on the law have simply extended them, and will keep doing so, effectively making them permanent as the end date becomes ever further in the future.
The Scottish Government has stopped that pretence and just unveiled plans to make its ’emergency’ Covid powers permanent. At this point governments can pretty much do whatever they want.
John Swinney, the Deputy First Minister, unveiled a paper proposing the removal of the March 2022 expiry date for a host of extraordinary powers, including the ability to impose lockdowns, close schools and require people to wear face coverings. Other controversial rules such as allowing more prisoners to be released early would also be extended, along with the wider use of fines as an alternative to prosecution.
Mr Swinney insisted measures that were no longer needed would be removed, but argued those with “demonstrable benefit to the people of Scotland” should be retained for use against Covid or anything else deemed a public health threat. He argued the consultation was “an opportunity to maintain changes that have been welcomed by people who now don’t want to lose transformations that have been innovative” during the pandemic.