A woman who was fined £500 for buying the wrong kind of lateral flow test is "furious" that the Prime Minister was charged only £50 for 'Partygate'.
On April 12, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak received fines from the Met Police for lockdown breaches. Both, Johnson and Sunak, attended a birthday gathering for the Prime Minister at the Cabinet Office in June 2020.
Boris Johnson said he paid the £50 fixed penalty relating to the gathering in the Cabinet Room and offered a "full apology". But the woman from North Liverpool, who wishes to remain anonymous, thinks that this is "completely unfair" after the "hefty" fixed penalty notice she received in 2021.
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The woman, and her partner, were travelling back from Porto, Portugal, in June 2021 - during the traffic light system put in place for travel. The 21-year-old was told she would be fined for purchasing a lateral flow test from a non-registered provider, her details were taken at Manchester Airport and the letter detailing the fixed penalty notice was received 10 months later.
Before heading to Porto Airport, the couple arrived at one of the "very busy" test centres in Portugal, where a member of staff told them that they could do " one of these lateral flow tests ". She was aware that she was allowed to use a lateral flow test to return, as long as they were from a registered provider, which she assumed they were.
However when she, and her 24-year-old partner, arrived at Manchester she was "shocked" to discover that border control told her she would be receiving a fine at a later date, as they disputed the test being from a registered provider.
The woman said: "What annoys me is - I have complied with every single rule, I’ve done all the tests, I have had all the vaccines, and he [Boris Johnson] can go and do that?
"It just does my head in, why can he break the rules and the law completely and basically nothing happen, but I abide by them, and because the test wasn’t on their list, I get a fine ten times his amount, it is a joke. I am thinking about appealing it, but I don’t know yet, I need to get some more advice."
