This is what a police state is like

Robust if no doubt controversial views from Lord Sumption:

"Draconian police crackdowns on motorists and walkers during the Covid-19 outbreak are “disgraceful”, a former Supreme Court judge said this afternoon.

Lord Sumption said that the UK was in danger of becoming a “police state” if other forces mirrored the recent approach of Derbyshire police as he warned of forces becoming a “disciplined hierarchy” operating at the command of ministers.

Lord Sumption said it was “frankly disgraceful” that the Derbyshire police had attempted “to shame people from using their undoubted right to travel to take exercise in the country and wrecking beauty spots in the fells so that people don’t want to go there”.

The former Supreme Court justice — who retired from the country's highest bench in 2018 and is well known for controversial opinions — told Radio 4: “This is what a police state is like. It’s a state in which the government can issue orders or express preferences with no legal authority and the police will enforce ministers’ wishes.”

Lord Sumption, 71, went on to say that the UK’s tradition of having a police force consisting of “citizens in uniform” was under threat. He said that the police should not be “members of a disciplined hierarchy operating just at the government’s command”.

However, he added that when reacting to the virus outbreak, “in some parts of the country the police have been trying to stop people from doing things like travelling to take exercise in the open country — which are not contrary to the regulations — simply because ministers have said that they would prefer us not to.

“The police have no power to enforce ministers’ preferences — but only legal regulations, which don’t go anything like as far as the government’s guidance.”

While the retired judge acknowledged that “most police forces” had behaved in a “sensible and moderate” fashion so far during the crisis, he said that “Derbyshire police have shamed our policing traditions”.

Lord Sumption said that “there is a natural tendency and a strong temptation for the police to lose sight of their real functions and turn themselves from citizens in uniforms into glorified school prefects.

“It is really sad that the Derbyshire police have failed to resist that temptation.”

He said that the public had to take responsibility for its role in a potential over-reaction to the pandemic.

“The pressure on politicians has come from the public,” he said, adding: “They want action; they don’t pause to ask whether the action will work; they don’t ask themselves whether the cost will be worth paying; they want action anyway.”

He also advised that “anyone who has studied history will recognise here the classic symptoms of collective hysteria. Hysteria is infectious — we are working ourselves up into a lather in which we exaggerate the threat and stop asking ourselves whether the cure might be worse than the disease.

We have to recognise that this is how societies become despotisms — also have to recognise that this is a process that leads naturally to exaggeration.”

He accepted that coronavirus was “clearly serious for those with other medical conditions, especially if they are old”.

However, Lord Sumption added that “the real question is: is this serious enough to warrant putting our population into house imprisonment, wrecking our economy for an indefinite period, destroying businesses that honest and hard-working people have taken years to build up, saddling future generations with debt, depression, heart attacks, suicide and unbelievable distress inflicted on millions of people who are not especially vulnerable and who will suffer only mild symptoms or none at all?”

There was support for Lord Sumption’s views from Marian Duggan, a criminologist at the University of Kent.

She said draconian police powers “may be deemed necessary in the current climate, but the public must be assured that they will indeed be time-limited if policing is to be considered legitimate — and not unduly authoritarian — once the pandemic is over. Similarly, efforts should be taken to dissuade the development of a perceived surveillance state.”

The Met's Cressida Dick, at least, seems to be getting the message:

New powers to enforce coronavirus lockdown rules should only be used as "a last resort", the head of the Met Police has told officers.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick, said her approach is to "help educate and encourage" the public to comply with the tightest restrictions seen in peacetime in the UK.

Dame Cressida told LBC: "We are all getting used to the new restrictions and I've been very clear that in the first instance I want my officers to be engaging with people, talking to people, encouraging them to comply.

"Explaining, of course, if they don't understand - already we have had examples of people who simply hadn't quite heard all the messages - and, only as a very last resort with the current restrictions, using firm direction or even enforcement."

Her comments came after a number of forces were accused of being overzealous in their approach to the new rules.