None of This Needed to Happen

The advocate who represented four people who reached settlements over their treatment at the prison has said the situation shouldn’t have got that far.

Ian Kermode represented all of the claimants, with only one, Wayne Mellor, refusing a no-admission deal and secretive payout, his claim was later thrown out by the High Court. 

While similar in nature, essentially being that their human rights were breached, Mr Kermode said the claimants all had varying personal circumstances such as the length of their detention and psychiatric harm. 

Mr Kermode said: ‘The Isle of Man and the UK had essentially identical regulations save that in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland breach of regulations was only punishable by way of a fixed penalty notice (on-the-spot fine of approximately £100 in the first instance), whereas in the Isle of Man a breach was punishable by a fine of up to £10,000 or up to three months’ jail.’

He added: ‘Remarkably between March 1 2020 and April 1 2022, there were a total of 248 arrests and 70 custodial sentences handed down for breach of Coronavirus regulations in the Isle of Man.

‘Significantly, in the UK no person was jailed for a breach of similar regulations.’

Mr Kermode also said that while 22 juveniles (under 17-years-old) were arrested and two were given custodial sentences, he said in the UK there were no arrests or custodial sentences handed to juveniles in the same period. 

When Deemster Christoper Cope threw out Mr Mellor’s case, he said that the lockdown measures at the prison were ‘exceptional measures for exceptional times’.

However Mr Kermode, who has long argued against the lockdown laws that were brought in during the pandemic, rejects this argument and says it shouldn’t have got that far in the first place.

He said: ‘Obviously if the Manx Government had made Coronavirus regulations punishable only by way of a fixed penalty notice (as in the UK), it is likely that no person would ever have been arrested, sentenced by the court, or served a custodial sentence at Isle of Man Prison for breaching such regulations.

‘All of the considerable costs to the taxpayer of Police arrests and detention, criminal court appearances, prison incarceration and consequential civil litigation (including settlement monies) that have in fact been incurred would therefore have been completely avoided.’