Hancock's COVID Lies
Matt Hancock is back from the jungle and has published his Pandemic Diaries alongside political journalist Isabel Oakeshott.
For the best, and certainly most entertaining, excerpts I would recommend following Adam Wagner on Twitter whose own book about the pandemic, Emergency State, was also published recently.
Aside from Hancock’s self-congratulatory prose and best attempts at an Alan Partridge impression, there was one passage that really caught my eye.
Hancock blames the National Archives for important legislation being delayed but is that really the case?
I happen to know a thing or two about this because I used to work at the National Archives and was responsible for publishing new legislation.
It’s true that I did not work at Kew during the pandemic but I found it hard to believe that my former colleagues were slacking at a time of national importance so I did a bit more digging.
Here is an excerpt from their 2020-21 Annual Report:
“During the pandemic, we extended the Statutory Instruments (SI) registration and publishing service to provide cover 24 hours a day and seven days per week. This extended service was called upon for 72 SIs, including 16 regulations which were made, registered and published during the weekend. Emergency Coronavirus SIs were registered and published, on average 19 minutes after initial receipt. We set up a specialist team to ensure that Coronavirus amendments were identified and applied as quickly as possible, usually within 24 hours for national restrictions.”
There we have it. The service was not only running effectively but the team was going above and beyond to ensure that legislation was published.
The laws and restrictions devised by Hancock were often confusing and so it was essential that people had access to the rules so they could try to understand what they could and could not do. The rule of law depends on access to the law and that is what legislation.gov.uk provides on a daily basis.
That service was of huge importance throughout the lockdowns. No one would equate the work done at the National Archives with that undertaken by nurses or other heroes of the pandemic but it is important to acknowledge that this team (like so many other civil servants) made their own vital contributions and sacrifices throughout 2020 and beyond.
For Matt Hancock to not only fail to understand this but to then shift the blame so that he doesn’t look quite as bad is shameful.
In this week’s episode of the podcast I discuss the recent decision about anti-abortion protests in Northern Ireland and what that means for other protests as well.
Episode link: https://uklawweekly.com/2022-uksc-32/
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Marcus