Spain's lockdown order was unconstitutional - what about the UK?

 

The Spanish Government was not legally able to issue a strict lockdown order last spring, the country’s Constitutional Court has ruled. The court said that the legislative tool used by Spain to impose the first national quarantine on its citizens was not the right one.

Where does this leave other countries and especially the UK?

Last year Lord Sumption conducted a lecture entitled “Government by decree - Covid-19 and the Constitution”. This gave a scornful charge not only of the political motivations and processes behind lockdown measures, but also the fundamental legality of the measures, and their effect upon the long-term health of our parliamentary democracy.

His Lordship has been dubbed one of the ‘cleverest men in Britain’ and one of the pandemic’s most prominent anti-lockdown campaigners. Lord Sumption is an author, historian and lawyer of note. He was appointed directly from the practising Bar to the Supreme Court, and served as a Supreme Court Justice from 2012-18. In 2019, he delivered the BBC Reith Lectures, "Law and the Decline of Politics", and is now a regular commentator in the media. 

Lord Sumption described the measures as being “coercive powers over citizens on a scale never previously attempted,” that have provided the government with effective control enforced by the police over the personal lives of the entire population; who people are able to meet, what they are permitted to do, and even what they are permitted to do within the privacy of their own home. These measures, he said, were effectively imposed by ministerial decree with minimal parliamentary involvement. He described them as constituting “the most significant interference with personal freedom in the history of our country,” with restrictions that have not been previously been enacted even during war time or health crises “even more serious than this one.”

More here: 

https://www.33bedfordrow.co.uk/insights/articles/was-lockdown-lawful-thoughts-of-a-former-supreme-court-judge  

UK Lockdown response - “a monument of collective hysteria and government folly.”

Although accepting the “seriousness of the epidemic,” Lord Sumption concluded that history will look back on the UK's  response as  “a monument of collective hysteria and government folly.”

How long, many people may now ask, will it be before the legal finger points at Boris Johnson's, UK Tory Government?