Read on Twitter
There is, unfortunately, a bit of a pattern here. https://twitter.com/jreynoldsmp/status/1288951616771588096
Of course decisions need to be taken fast. But issues such as these really need to be run through at the time the decision is taken. What exactly do we want to stop? https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1288933379707228173?s=21 https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1288933379707228173
One advantage in getting a legal text of what you want to do drafted as part of the decision, rather than as an afterthought left to the last moment, is that the process of drafting forces clarity about what exactly you want to stop people doing.
(One of the points made here, which gives me another chance to plug it.) https://twitter.com/soclablaw/status/1283730709597827073?s=21 https://twitter.com/soclablaw/status/1283730709597827073
You could use this tweet as an example for law students of how not to draft a prohibition. List the (real and important) things left unclear. https://twitter.com/matthancock/status/1288931858856710150?s=21. https://twitter.com/matthancock/status/1288931858856710150
Eg are people from different households allowed to work tomorrow in the same office?
I’d have no objection at all (it’s Twitter!) if the SoS was trying to summarise a clear text to which he was pointing you. But there is no text. This tweet, plus briefing (inevitably confused when no one has a text to work from) seems at this precise moment to be all there is.
“Indoors” apparently includes gardens. Who knew? https://twitter.com/lisanandy/status/1288945258311671820?s=21 https://twitter.com/lisanandy/status/1288945258311671820
QED. https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1288960728704196609?s=21 https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1288960728704196609
But - with respect to @lewis_goodall - it isn’t “a disaster of comms”: it’s a consequence of not having focused on exactly what decision they were actually taking, and thinking it through.
No press office on the planet can explain a decision that hasn’t properly been thought through.
Yet another point that you wouldn’t have guessed from the SoS’s tweet. https://twitter.com/lisanandy/status/1288959463584604160?s=21 https://twitter.com/lisanandy/status/1288959463584604160
I absolutely get that decisions need to be taken very fast and mistakes may well be made. But the problem is that in the end what Ministers are doing here is making law: and if they are to do that competently they have to focus at once on that legislative task.
Getting the legislation right is not a “nice to have”: it’s the central aspect of the power of the State that they are exercising here.
The old problem of confusing guidance and law comes back again. https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1288961738923278348?s=21 https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1288961738923278348
Ah. Here we are. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-rules-on-gatherings-in-some-parts-of-northern-england
But still no regulations 
.
.
And when is this coming into force? 7 minutes ago?
