Two case studies. On subsidy control, it should have been a U.K. priority to renegotiate Art 10 of the Protocol (which is going to cause problems).
But no discernible attempt was made to do that. Perhaps because that would have involved clear commitments up front that the U.K. would have its own effective subsidy control regime.
But instead the current govt flip-flopped over a subsidy control regime and resorted to threats just to break Article 10 (Part 5 of the IMB) - threats that were both trust-destroying and ineffective (no way past the Lords) at the same time.
Result: we have a commitment to an effective subsidy regime: but we are nonetheless left with Art 10 in full.
Mobility: huge U.K. interest in mobility of our creative sector. Acknowledged by govt.
But instead of building on EU offer, decision taken to drop any mobility chapter (presumably to maintain the purity of the “end FOM” line) and to squeeze what we wanted for the creative sector into the services provisions (where what is needed doesn’t fit). Result: nothing.
Patter about maintaining “sovereignty” is really a cover for the failure to use our sovereignty to get an agreement with the EU that delivers on our key interests (in these respects as in many others).
1. The thesis that the rule of law is a difficult concept that may be being over-extended has some force. But that may be because it’s being used to do jobs that in a mature constitution would have been properly articulated: such as the boundary between courts and legislature.
2. These claims are not alternatives: they can be (and are) both true. The U.K. executive in the 50s/60s had an extraordinary amount of power (Hailsham’s “elective dictatorship”). It was constrained by “good chaps” understandings of how that power would be used.
Not obvious to me that this is a legally relevant consideration in imposing quarantine on return from an amber country on the double-vaccinated under *public health* powers.
The basis for imposing quarantine on a person under section 45F of the Public Health Act 1984 is that the requirement is for preventing danger to public health.
If quarantining P isn’t justified on the basis that (unless quarantined) P poses a danger to public health, then P can’t be quarantined: it’s irrelevant that it’s “not fair in many ways” that P isn’t subject to that obligation while others (who do pose that danger) are.
Interesting set of responses to that question. The best answers note that inward mobility from the EU may not be in the national interest simply because the volume will be larger.
A series of points on the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol.
1. It sets out binding obligations under international law - as an integral part of the Withdrawal Agreement.
2. It is also incorporated into U.K. law (s.7A of the EU Withdrawal Agreement). It binds the U.K. government as a matter of domestic law (subject to legislation clearly overriding it, which would be unlikely to clear the House of Lords).
A good answer would focus on the civil service code and on Part 1 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010.
In favour of “boss”: Ministers’ power to manage the CS; the requirement that the CS code “to carry out their duties for the assistance of the administration as it is duly constituted for the time being, whatever its political complexion.” (ss.3(1) and 7(2)).
One under-discussed aspect of threats by the U.K. government to breach/ignore the I/NI Protocol: it needs to be remembered that non-compliance with the Protocol is also non-compliance with *domestic* U.K. law which the U.K. government has no *domestic* power to over-ride.
See s7A of the Withdrawal Act.
Subject to issues of standing (which are these days rarely decisive) the U.K. courts could be asked to make orders (declarations/injunctions) to restrain any government attempt to waive or legislate to remove Protocol obligations.