Lord Sumption:

Under the Act which the UK Government should have used, the one which most obviously applied, namely, the Civil Contingencies Act, states that in an emergency the Government can bring regulations forward which have provisional validity for seven days. That is to say they require no parliamentary approval until the end of that seven-day period.

Within seven days, they must be confirmed by the Parliament and thereafter must be reconfirmed every 30 days. That seems to me to be an acceptable compromise. [Inaudible.]That is how the system ought to work in the UK. However, the decision to use other legislation which was not designed for emergencies of this scale has meant that the provisional validity of the regulations in the UK is much longer than seven days, at 28 days, and the regulations could remain in force for up to two years. That is very unsatisfactory and it is not a model I would recommend to anyone else.