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Covid marshals? It’s a deeply alarming notion

Deploying power without accountability is the worst way to go about toughening the rules

Calling all curtain twitchers, overzealous student union representatives and loyal zebra-crossing enthusiasts: have we got a job for you.

This was essentially the pitch Boris Johnson made on Wednesday afternoon, ushering in a new era of Covid snitching. The Downing Street press conference marked the start of a retreat back into lockdown measures, with gatherings larger than six people made illegal, enforced by police with warnings, fines and even arrests. But this time round, they will have some help. “Covid-secure marshals”, will be an extra set of eyes and ears to make sure not a single pub trip for seven goes unnoticed.

The job of these Covid marshals – an initiative which sits within the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government – will include “directing pedestrians, providing information, cleaning touch points, preventing mixing between groups and being a point of contact for information on government guidelines.”

Providing information which way, exactly? The rather vague job synopsis leaves plenty open to interpretation: while some may see their job remit as helpfully to inform people how they can most easily go about their day, others are quite likely to prioritise feeding information to the authorities who can then issue fines and arrests: “They’re seated at 3 o’clock in St James’s Park, armed with tinnies, blankets and cat-sized-dog.”

At the height of lockdown, police switchboards were overwhelmed with phone calls reporting breaches of the rules. “Antisocial behaviour” calls more than doubled this April from the year before. But it seems that ratting on your neighbour for having a friend round to the garden was just child’s play. Now, you will get to wear a government-procured high-vis jacket and a badge while you do it.

It’s a classic case of rewarding bad behaviour. Those with the most time on their hands, causing the most nuisance have now been given a formalised role if they wish to put themselves forward. And it may not just feed their desire to snitch and stir, but could prove extremely lucrative as well, with reports that marshals could be paid up to £30,000 per year – more than some junior doctors. The details of how the marshals will be deployed and paid are being left to local authorities to decide, but the push from the centre to dish out the badges and cash reveals some stark revelations about the coming months: the Government is serious about rolling back liberties again, and it’s increasingly uninterested in the extent to which the public consents.

If a government is going to toughen the rules, granting people power without accountability is one of the worst ways to go about it. The relationship between the police and the policed goes both ways: the former assert their power in the knowledge that their actions could be heavily scrutinised in instances where it goes wrong. The British public are policed by consent – something which became apparent in the spring, when local forces boasted of inappropriate drone usage and shops were told not to sell “non-essential” Easter eggs. These relatively small abuses of power were publicised, ridiculed and squashed, precisely because this kind of overreach by authority was not going to be tolerated.

Yet with Covid marshals, we have a dangerous murky middle, comprising those who will feel emboldened to act, reprimand or punish, yet with no legal right to do so. Their opinions and interpretations of rules will be prioritised because of their brightly coloured jackets, and plenty of people who don’t know the precise details of the Covid regulations will take their word as law.

But there may be no good reason to believe it is: between March and May, all 44 prosecutions brought under the Coronavirus Act were found to be unlawful, with dozens of people wrongly charged with breaking the rules. If the professionals are getting it wrong, what makes us think the paid volunteers will get it right? There is no amount of training from local councils that can legitimise people policing the behaviours of their fellow residents, especially during one of the most draconian and oppressive periods for civil liberties in Britain’s history.

With great power supposedly comes great responsibility. This is unlikely to prove true for the Covid-secure marshals, whom we may soon see out in the streets in full force. There is one snag in the Government’s plan, though, a novel idea (these days) from the Local Government Association, that salaries for marshals should be costed. Perhaps this cost will get lumped into general Covid spending, which is estimated to take this year’s budget deficit well over £300 billion. But without knowing who will be made to foot the bill, it is conceivable that the marshals’ rollout may be put on hold.

If it is, we should use the lull to reflect on how we got here: how a once-libertarian Prime Minister and Conservative Government are now promoting the twitchers over the vast majority of the public – who dutifully stayed home and now, as importantly, are trying to return some semblance of normality to their lives.

What do you think about the idea of Covid marshals? Would you volunteer for the job? Let us know in the comments below.
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