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Talkback: is guidance just guidance or not?

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03 February 2021 / Fred Philpott
Issue: 7919 / Categories: Opinion , Covid-19 , Public
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‘Substantial’ meals & staying at home: Fred Philpott compares current guidance with the actual law

I hope to expand upon the excellent article by the employment lawyer Juliet Carp in NLJ of 4 December 2020 (‘What is ‘guidance’, & do we have to comply with it?’, 170 NLJ 7913, p9–11). I also pay tribute to the incisive piece on the subject by Lord Sumption in The Daily Telegraph (‘It is not the police’s job to enforce the lockdown whims of ministers’, The Daily Telegraph, 12 January 2021).

I wish to review some previous authorities dealing with guidance, and give two examples of how it has been used in the current situation.

I will start first with the coronavirus (COVID-19) example. Some official guidance has been promulgated as regards the work exemption. Some guidance has said, for example, that one must have some sort of formal presentation in order to get within the exemption. That is not so. It illustrates how so

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