Lord Sumption:

The United Kingdom has exactly the same three levels of legislative action and exactly the same problem about the status of guidelines. The guidelines issued from time to time by the UK government have gone a lot further than anything in the regulations. It is clear in the United Kingdom, and I presume also in Ireland, that guidelines are only binding in law so far as they are also reflected in regulations which are within the powers conferred by the statute. In the United Kingdom, the Government has not been nearly clear enough about what is guidance and what is law. It is fundamental that it should be.

In the UK, at the outset back in March and early April, the police started enforcing the Government guidelines in circumstances where there was no legislative basis for them. That came to an end quite quickly, because in the middle of April, the College of Policing, which was responsible for giving general guidance on the exercise of police powers to the police forces throughout the country, produced a very helpful document on a single page which told every policeman in the land what he could and could not enforce. That was an extremely positive and productive thing to have done, but it was not done by a Ministry but by the police. The Government would have assisted the process very much had it been much clearer from the outset about what was advice and what was law.