Ex-police chief: Covid tier system is 'extraordinarily complicated'

22 October 2020, 13:53

Ex-police chief: Covid tier system is "extraordinarily complicated"

This is the moment a former police chief told LBC's Nick Ferrari that the Covid tier system is "extraordinarily complicated".

The exchange comes after current Assistant Chief Constable Owen Weatherill told MPs on the Home Affairs Select Committee that he was not “conversant” with all the regulations under system and was "not going to try to be".

Earlier in his show, Nick Ferrari pointed out to Policing Minister Kit Malthouse that Mr Weatherill was one of two senior officers to not fully know the rules when appearing before the committee.

Former Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde told Nick: "[The] underlying point is this is extraordinarily complicated. And if it's complicated for the top end of the service, the core frontline officers who are trying to make sense of this have great difficulty.

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"And I think that's why you're seeing not a lot of enforcement, quite frankly, going on across the country."

Nick then asked Sir Hugh if the new rules "need to be this complex", to which the ex-PSNI Chief Constable responded: "Well, I think the answer to that is no."

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During the exchange, Sir Hugh also said: "My sense is that we do have a hardcore of people who have no intention of complying with the rules, the regulations or the advice...where enforcement does have a role to play."

Sir Hugh later added: "The reality is on a day-to-day basis you are seeing a growing level of misbehaviour of people not abiding by the rules, which of course puts all their fellow citizens at risk."