Not just following a positive test, following ‘close contact’ with someone who has had one.
This is a deprivation of liberty that does not fall within the exception to Article 5 of the ECHR (Enhorn v Sweden). It is also false imprisonment.
There is no empirical basis for saying that *anyone* in close proximity with one individual who *might* have been infectious (and the PCR test is a deeply inaccurate test of whether they are) is ‘potentially infectious’.
To suggest that would be to enlarge the category to the extent that it was meaningless. It would include anyone who had shared a train carriage, And, where deprivation of the most fundamental of rights is concerned, any exceptions must be carefully constrained.
Nor is there any rational basis for this legislation to be so urgent that the emergency procedure (under s 45R), under which there is no prior scrutiny of a measure that affects fundamental rights, is ‘necessary’.
This is thus yet another unlawful use of the Public Health Act to impose the most far reaching deprivations of human rights. Made more sinister by the fact that it is published only hours before it is to come into force.
It is not possible to consider this country a functioning, liberal democracy. It has not been for some time.
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