First Minister warns the nation to obey the rules or risk a reimposed lockdown

Covid-19 lockdown restrictions could be reimposed as well as a police matter after a wave of people broke the guidance over the weekend, according to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

Almost 800 groups of people had to be dispersed by police over the weekend – five times as many as on the previous weekend while traffic movements were up by as much as 70 per cent, including three times the number on the previous heading to Loch Lomond and Glencoe.

Some of those even chose to stay overnight in tents, caravans or motorhomes prompting Ms Sturgeon to say it was hard to see how it could all have been accounted for by local traffic.

The First Minister acknowledged that the vast majority of people obeyed the rules but never-the-less warned that if the trend of ignoring guidance continued then harsher restrictions on movement would have to be made law and will impact the pace of lifting the lockdown in future.

She described the progress made so far as “fragile” and “not irreversible” while making her frustration at the situation plain.

She noted: “It is still the case that every day I have to stand here and confirm the loss of life.”

Ms Sturgeon said: “I know that the vast majority of people stuck to the rules and I want to thank you sincerely for that, you stayed outdoors in small groups and you stayed more than two metres away from other householders, so again my thanks to you for that.

“It has also been clear, that over the weekend that not everybody stuck to the rules. I'm told by the police that on Saturday alone there were 797 dispersals and that is people being moved on for not complying with the rules.

“To give some context to that 797 is five times higher than the figure of previous Saturday. There were also clearly cases where despite the guidance we issued people wear driving more than five miles to beauty spots.

“In some places, Loch Lomond and Glencoe for example, the increase was even more dramatic than that – on Saturday on the A82 by Loch Lomond traffic was around three times higher than it was the previous Saturday and we saw a similar picture around Glencoe.

“I am going to be very blunt here – it is very hard to see how all of that can have been caused by local residents or by people travelling a reasonable distance to meet loved ones.

"So we will be considering all of that as we must do in assessing the impact of the phase one changes.

“Last week, we deliberately allowed some flexibility when we changed the lockdown restrictions, we recommended that people don’t travel more than five miles for recreation but we left room for some discretion so that you can go further to visit family.

“We also strongly recommended that when two households meet there should be no more than eight people in total in a group but again we put that into guidance rather than into law because we do trust and continue to trust the majority to keep those groups small and to stay within the rules.

“But it is worth being clear – in fact I have a duty to be clear with you – if there is continued evidence of even a minority not abiding by these guidelines and travelling unnecessarily, if people meet up in larger groups, and if they are making journeys, which risk spreading the virus we will have to put these restrictions on group size and travel distance into law and we won't hesitate to do that if we think that is necessary for the collective safety and well-being of the population.

“Of course, I should make clear that the stipulation that no more than two households meets at any one time is already the law and will be enforced by the police.

"The reason I'm stressing all this, the real danger we still face is not because I want to be imposing these restrictions but it is because the progress we've made so far in tackling Covid-19 is simply not guaranteed and it is not irreversible.

“Cases could increase again, it wouldn't take too much for that to happen rather than continuing to decrease and if that happens then that will result in more loss of life and if all of that happens restrictions will have to be reimposed rather than being further relaxed.

“But the only way of avoiding that is for all of us to comply with the rules.”

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