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Francis Hoar Profile picture
@Francis_Hoar
Sep 14, 2020 • 9 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
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Adam continues to provide a valuable service given the inexcusable publication of these regulations just before they are made. The justification for using the emergency procedure (and so no Parliamentary scrutiny for a potentially indefinite period) is held by a gossimar thread.
It is a potentially indefinite period because it lasts for 28 days but only those days during a period in which Parliament is sitting. Regulations under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, on the other hand, must be approved by Parliament within seven days irrespective.
One small (but not insignificant) observation. This appears to ban friendly sports matches or kicks-abouts. However, that would not be the case if one member set up a limited company and organised the matches. This is the level of absurdity to which this government has stooped.
A further point is that the Regulations, yet again, had no impact assessment. Consequently, the courts should give it little if any margin of appreciation: R (FACT) v Secretary of State [2020] EWCA Civ 649.
Very concerningly, and contrary to a Tweet by the Archbishop of Canterbury @JustinWelby last week, there appears to be an absolute ban on services of more than six people that are not weddings, funerals or 'life events' (Christenings,Bar Mitzvahs,Confirmations,etc). @AdamWagner1
There was no specific exemption in the No. 2 Regulations (which these amend). Services were permitted simply by reason of being in private or public places, indoors, which were not dwellings.
No additional exemption to the Rule of Six Regulations has been added that would preserve the right to hold religious services other than weddings, funerals and ‘life events’.
This is a very significant interference with Article 9 ECHR rights to religious worship and freedom. Irrespective of its justification at the height of the epidemic, how can it possibly be proportionate with around 5-10 deaths per day in English hospitals?
@Adrian_Hilton @JonathanSachs @chiefrabbi @MuslimCouncil @the_hindu @RCWestminster Please see above.

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More from @Francis_Hoar

Francis Hoar Profile picture
Jul 10, 2025
Hermer betrays a lack of understanding about the constitution & how it ensures democratic accountability: of Ministers to Parliament & of Parliament to the people.
Compliance with international obligations is a matter for Ministers alone. The AG advises them-directly. No more. 🧵 Image
Image
(Link below: )

International *obligations* are obligations on states. It is for a state - here, the Crown acting through Ministers - to decide how it complies with its international obligations, accepting the *international* consequences if it does not.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/…
And that can and may often include *whether* to comply with those obligations.

International obligations have no impact on domestic law for good reason. Only Parliament in its fullest sense - as a legislator - can make domestic law directly.
Read 12 tweets
Francis Hoar Profile picture
Feb 9, 2025
Not quite. The key problems are the Terms of Reference, the failure to grant core participant status to any group challenging lockdowns and of the chair and counsel to scrutinise the evidence.
Lawyers aren’t purporting to be experts. They just aren’t asking the right questions.
And that they aren’t is in large part (although not only) because of the Terms of Reference and the lack of an adversarial process through cross-examination of experts by participants with different perspectives.
With vanishingly few exceptions, the only difference in perspective allowed has been between ‘lockdown’ and ‘lockdown earlier and harder’.
Read 10 tweets
Francis Hoar Profile picture
Jan 20, 2025
This is not only reasonable but contemplated by the H. Rts Act, where legsl’n interferes with Conv’n rights in the opinion of domestic cts or Strasbourg. The courts can only make a declaration of incompatibility where the law cannot be constructed compatibly with Conv’n rights.
And, while there is a duty to construct legislation compatibly with Convention rights (as considered to apply by domestic courts or Strasbourg jurisprudence) where it is possible to do so, Parliament can then legislate so that it is impossible for the courts to do anything but follow their direction, even if incompatible with the courts’ jurisprudence on Convention rights.
This was the formulation Derry Irvine and others created in the HRA 1998, preserving Parliamentary sovereignty and allowing a creative tension between Parliament, Strasbourg and the domestic courts. The idea of human rights ‘coming home’ was not to cut Parliament out but to entrench it as part of the process.
Read 9 tweets
Francis Hoar Profile picture
Apr 16, 2024
The government’s tobacco Bill is not just stunningly impractical and unjustified by the harm that smoking causes to society, rather than the individual. It is sinister. To require adults to prove their age (not that they have reached adulthood) to buy a legal product is a gross intrusion in to individual privacy and autonomy.
It has preposterous results, such as the two 25 year-olds (then 35, 45…), a day apart in age, one of whom will commit a *criminal offence* by buying a product available to the other. (Again, not comparable to an age limit based on an assessment of maturity that is reached, only once, by all.)
It would create a thoroughly dangerous precedent that the state may ban a product not because of its capacity to do immediate grave harm (eg poisons) or to cause disorder or other societal mischief (eg alcohol, if we were being honest) but because of long-term health risks.
Read 11 tweets
Francis Hoar Profile picture
Jun 28, 2023
I acted in a judicial review of this decsn in 2021. Regardless of whether the court rightly rejected the challenge to the decision of the Sec of State, as a matter of record the JCVI did not recommend vaccination for 11-15s as there was insufficient evidence about their safety.
The reason why the Chief Medical Officers of the UK and devolved nations (‘the CMOs’) recommended overruling them was astonishingly flimsy - that they might save a (proportionately) tiny number of school days in absences by reducing the number of children getting Covid.
In making that decision, the CMOs *expressly* decides not to measure that against the accepted certainty of absences due to side-effects of the vaccine. Even only taking into account minor side effects (cold like symptoms) these were likely to be greater than absences from Covid.
Read 5 tweets
Francis Hoar Profile picture
Jun 13, 2023
An improvement on indications of Lady Hallett’s thinking,but it misses central points.
Lockdowns weren’t considered in pandemic plans not just b’cs they were unthinkable but bc’s measures *less* draconian were found to be ineffective & disproportionate.

bbc.co.uk/news/health-65…
It *is* positive that the Inquiry is finally addressing the lack of any adequate prior consideration of the exceptional harm that wld be the inevitable consequence of lockdown; let alone to weigh whether that harm was justified by the supposed efficacy of lockdown.
(I say finally because of the consummate lack of any such consideration in the terms of reference and earlier openings.)
Read 9 tweets

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