There is “no evidence” that issuing people with fines for supposed lockdown breaches helped to reduce the spread of Covid-19, a Police Scotland adviser told the UK Covid inquiry today.

Susan McVie, a professor of quantitative criminology at Edinburgh University, criticised the UK government’s “mantra” around on-the-spot fines that were disproportionately given to people from ethnic minority backgrounds.

She said: “[Then home secretary] Priti Patel… specifically said that the use of enforcement would help to reduce the spread of the disease, protect the NHS and save lives.

“I think it was kind of false impression to link that kind of public health impact with the enforcement itself.”

McVie, who also sits on several Scottish government committees, added that “there’s an inherent inequality” in the use of fixed penalty notices (FPNs) – fines handed out by police officers without the need for anyone to go to court.

She explained: “A fine of £60 for a government minister might be a small amount of pocket change. But that might be quite a large amount of money for someone who's experiencing financial hardship.”

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak were among the 50 people issued with FPNs for attending lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street.

The inquiry was shown evidence from a report McVie wrote that found people from ethnic minority backgrounds were nearly 1.5 times more likely to receive an FPN than white people. Black people, who were the most disproportionately affected, were 1.8 times more likely to be targeted.

FPNs “impacted disproportionately on people from more deprived backgrounds and individuals from certain social groups”, McVie continued, adding that “a formal warning could have been used” instead.

In her witness statement, Mcvie also drew attention to the fact that more than 250 FPNs were issued to children in Scotland between March and May 2020.

The decision to issue FPNs to those breaking lockdown restrictions went “against the prevailing trend” in Scotland, Mcvie told the hearing. Police in the country had been moving away from issuing on-the-spot fines in the years prior to the pandemic.

The UK’s Covid inquiry is currently focusing on how the Scottish government handled the crisis.

Giving evidence in today’s hearing, McVie further criticised some of the regulations in place to stop the spread of the virus, which she described as “absolute gobbledygook”.

“It was not always clear to either members of the public or case officers themselves what was a breach of the law and what was merely a breach of guidance,” she said.

The Scottish government’s decision to implement restrictions without consulting police officers also caused problems, McVie told the hearing.

There was “at least one occasion I can remember that the regulations had been enacted before the police even saw them”, she said, adding: “It was a frustration of senior officers.”

“It causes problems when you when you've got a police force with over 17,000 officers and you have to rule out training and instruction to frontline officers who are then going to go out and implement these new regulations.”

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