Thread by @rcolvile

Here's my column today. Annoyingly, I made a mistake in it. It's worth explaining why, because it shows how messed up policy on self-isolation really is. thetimes.co.uk/article/all-th…

For the last few days, I and others have been *less than polite* about the exemption procedure, which sees firms having to send individual staff names in to govt, and the justification for exempting them, then wait for three different govt depts to discuss and send a letter back.

As we've pointed out, this seems a cumbersome, bureaucratic, economy-destroying, Whitehall-knows-best approach.

You can tell this scheme (which operates until Aug 16) is a smoothly implemented cross-government initiative from the fact that *all* the departments you have to email about this have completely different addresses to send it to.

In my column, I said that this applied only to those who weren't in the special exempt sectors. But as @JohnAshmore points out in his excellent @CapX briefing today, that's wrong. capx.co/weekly-briefin…

It turns out that this ludicrously impractical scheme - 'name your self-isolating staff and we'll say yes or no' - is in fact the special fast-track scheme for those in vital jobs in vital sectors.

And as the guidance says, they really do mean vital. Like, the guy who stops the nuclear power plant from melting down vital. gov.uk/guidance/nhs-t…

For certain very very limited sectors (food and now bits of transport), there is daily tracing instead. But otherwise, this is the hoop you have to jump through.

And if you think your business is strategically vital but it's not on the list? Just 'contact the government'. No actual instructions (though you'd assume you'd try the emails for those who do qualify).

Anyway, after way too many screenshots, the interesting bit. In my column, I said those in strategically vital sectors would have an actually workable way to mitigate the pandemic impacts because that's what I was told. But what they meant by that was that daily tracing pilot.

In other words, those in the listed sectors are still overwhelmingly stuck with the 'send in the names' system. And those outside those sectors are pretty much out of luck.

(The bulk of my column is about something completely different - namely what we can tell about the government from its recent blizzard of activity - and you should definitely check it out thetimes.co.uk/article/all-th…)

(You should also sign up to @JohnAshmore's @CapX briefing at capx.co/subscribe, because it's a great product.)