Thread by @Raphael_Hogarth

I think the Durham Constabulary statement is good in parts and not so good in others. I also think there are lessons from this Cummings saga about the way the government has handled the whole lockdown.

The police say they are interested in breaches of Regulation 6 of the lockdown regulations, which are laws, and not government guidance, which are not. Good. The police have sometimes forgotten that they have no business enforcing guidance. See blog:
instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/governmen…

I wouldn't say there was no offence in going to Durham, as I don't really believe that he went because he had no other childcare options (rather than going because it was somewhere nice to SI). But I agree, at least, that the childcare excuse, *if true*, is a reasonable excuse.

That's because "reasonable excuse", under the regs, is an open category which "includes" particular examples, and where laws which restrict liberty are ambiguous, the courts have construed them in a generally pro-liberty, rather than pro-restriction, way.

Re the castle, any breach was "minor" because no social distancing issues. Good: these regs should be enforced by reference to their public health purpose.

Enforcement would have been "go home please". Good: massive restrictions on liberty should be enforced with a light touch.

For the same reason, I think not taking restrospective action in relation to these regulations is normally the right approach, at least as far as breaches that fit the description above are concerned.

FWIW, I'd go a bit further than "might" have been a breach, because driving to test your eyesight is so obviously unreasonable conduct that I don't see how it could possibly constitute a "reasonable" excuse, but I agree this only "might" have warranted police intervention.

(But, the eyesight thing is such obvious nonsense that it must have been made up afterwards, and if an officer had stopped him he might well have just said he was driving somewhere for his family to have a nice brief walk which, in my view, was never illegal.)

All that said, I share the anger of many at Cummings' use of the flexibility in the regs, *when the government's guidance and public statements have suggested to members of the public, and the police, that there is no flexibility*.

E.g. the government said you could only exercise once a day when the law didn't.

The government said you couldn't travel for exercise when the law didn't.

The government said you could only go out for a very specific set of reasons when the law didn't.

I think this is probably due to SAGE advice that any phrases which are open to interpretation were a bad idea.

But the fact is the law is and always was open to interpretation. What constitutes a "reasonable excuse" is necessarily open to interpretation.

So I think that the charge of hypocrisy is very well founded. He did one thing while saying (and having the government say) another.

But I think this whole saga should make us reflect as much on what his government said as on what he did.

Gvt messaging misrepresented the law and, in so doing, restrained people from quite a lot of (in my view) lawful and harmless conduct.

People feel they were taken for fools. No one was foolish for following gvt advice, but I think the gvt was foolish for giving some of it.
/ends