So how come No 10 escaped £14,000 fine?

The partygate furore has highlighted the discrepancies in Britain's Covid lockdown fines and prompted accusations of one rule for the politicians and others for the public. So what of the cases where party hosts were hammered hard? Tristan Kirk reports

- Tristan Kirk

WHEN the Met police drew a line under its Partygate probe by announcing that 126 fixed penalty notices have been issued and the investigation is over, Downing Street no doubt wished the saga was near to an end.

Boris Johnson already has a £50 fine on his record over his 2020 birthday party in the Cabinet Office, but has apparently escaped censure for events he attended including the "bring your own booze" gathering in No10's garden.

Yet government staffers have apparently been fined for those same events, prompting complaints that junior workers have been punished while those at the top have largely been let off the hook - although senior civil servant Sue Gray's full report on the gatherings is still to come.

In this mess, the Government has inadvertently shone a light on the use of lockdown laws throughout the pandemic among the general public, and disturbing trends that have emerged: uneven decision-making, baffling inequality, confusion and secrecy.

The laws were the most extreme curbs on freedoms in this country since the Second World War, and it was Mr Johnson's government that decided fines, penalties and prosecutions were needed to keep the public in line.

Yet it is still hard to understand how and why the laws have sometimes been applied, in Downing Street and beyond.

Doyin Adeyemi, 27, of Erith, cradled her six-week-old baby as she appeared at Westminster magistrates' court this year over a gathering in February 2021.

She had been at the property to "pick up my stuff", she said, and happened upon a birthday party. Police issued fines to four people, including her, but decided two others there could go free.