This petition was submitted during the 2019-2024 parliament
Rejected petition Ensure all Police Forces enforce the emergency legislation for face coverings
The Home Secretary must take urgent corrective action to ensure that the emergency legislation concerning face coverings is being adequately enforced by every local Police Force. This is an urgent public heath issue, for which effective enforcement is vital to our fight back against this virus.
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Many Police Forces are either wholly or partially failing to utilise their extensive enforcement powers under regulation 5 of The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Wearing of Face Coverings in a Relevant Place) (England) Regulations 2020.
Currently, many Forces are leaving almost all 'enforcement' to the premises staff, who have no powers whatsoever. This subject recently hit the headlines, when most of the big supermarkets decided they must take action themselves. This is almost entirely futile for the persistent offenders, who have been committing offences and continue to place lives at risk since the Regulations came into force on 24th July 2020.
This petition calls on the Home Secretary to urgently acknowledge and remedy this fact, in order to save lives.
This petition was rejected
Why was this petition rejected?
It’s about something that the UK Government or Parliament is not directly responsible for.
The Government is responsible for introducing the legislation that creates criminal offences, but taking action in respect of suspected offences is a matter for individual police forces, not the Government or House of Commons.
We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards.