Covid: Failing to isolate fine 'will be similar to other penalties'

The Welsh Government is making it a legal requirement to self-isolate when instructed to

Fines for breaking self-isolation will be similar to other Welsh coronavirus penalties, Wales' health minister has suggested.

The Welsh Government is making it a legal requirement to self-isolate when instructed to.

Vaughan Gething said the fines would "ideally" be consistent with fixed penalty notices (FPNs) which start at £60.

A government adviser has said fines "tend not to work".

Mr Gething said he does not want an "enforcement-heavy approach".

Under the existing coronavirus FPN system people can be fined £60 for a first offence, which increases to £120 for a second offence and continues to double for repeated offences, up to a maximum of £1,920.

If prosecuted, however, a court can impose an unlimited fine.

'Last resort'

Mr Gething said: "We're looking at something that will be consistent ideally with the rest of the fixed penalty notice regime that we've introduced.

"And the fixed penalty notices are a last resort.

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"The first point is to ask people to do the right thing."

Wales' firebreak lockdown comes to and end on Monday when a new set of nationwide rules come in.

What about Christmas?

Speaking on the BBC's Wales Live programme, Mr Gething also said the government will "review matters" two weeks after that and "be honest" about whether any further changes will then need to be made.

And he said the freedom people will have at Christmas depends on "all the choices we make over the next six weeks or so".

"If we can live together and find a way to understand what we should do to reduce the risk for all of us, we have much better prospects of being able to spend Christmas with people outside our own immediate household," he added.

"And of course we're going to look to work with other parts of the UK to do that because many of us see friends and family we don't see the rest of the year in other parts of the UK too."