yes good point. i don't think they have published the amending SI yet.

Looks like the Tiering system isn't having the hoped-for results.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55365294

and

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55358968

So on hearing of the challenge brought to him by Arlene, Mad Mark has decided a lockdown in Wales is a great plan. Nutty Nicola will be deciding on Tuesday, I have no doubt at all she is coming with a brilliant plan to be even worse than those two! How about a year long lockdown where you cannot go outside at all period? Would not put it past her!

Boris 'hoping to avoid a third lockdown' until Chris Whitty shouts at him and he goes over to his desk cowering and announces it.

Honestly by the time you are having third lockdowns, surely its time to question whether lockdowns work or do anything, clearly not.

Here you go https://www.legislation.gov.uk/wsi/2020/1609/made

Wales can look forward to the delights of new Alert Levels 1 to 4. I may try and read it later.

Northern Ireland is to start a six-week lockdown on Boxing Day which is is essentially a return to March's sustained restrictions.During the first week of the lockdown, people are urged only to leave their home for essential reasons. Between 20:00 and 06:00 from 26 December until 2 January:

• All businesses, including essential shops, must close
• No indoor or outdoor gatherings of any kind will be permitted, including at sporting venues
• Outdoor exercise will be permitted only with members of your own household.
• No household mixing will be permitted in private gardens or indoors in any setting, except for emergencies or the provision of health or care services
• No sporting events will be permitted at all - even at elite level.

The restrictions for the six-week period include:

• Closure of hospitality and non-essential retail with a stricter demarcation between essential and non-essential retail than that deployed during the recent circuit breaker
• Click-and-collect retail will not be permitted, and homeware will not be categorised as essential retail
• Off sales (including from bars) will be permitted from 08:00 on Monday to Saturday, and from 10:00 on Sunday, until 20:00 on any day
• Hospitality businesses will only be allowed to offer takeaway and delivery food
• Closure of close-contact businesses
• Places of worship can remain open under strict conditions
• MoT centres are expected to stay open
• Clarification is to be given on where vehicles can be washed ahead of MoT
• Tradespeople are expected to be allowed into homes for essential maintenance
• Childcare bubbles will continue
• Formal shielding will not resume, but "stronger advice" will be issued

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-55360646

I see rumours of travel restrictions for London and the South East since last night, I guess our hopes of a more normal start to 2021 aren't going in the right direction :(

Boris Johnson is due to make an announcement about possible tier 4 for London and SE England in 45 minutes (16:00 GMT today).

😭😭😭

So is there any legal effect to the new Tier 4 restrictions given parliament hasn't voted? Or are they only advisory?

I’m honestly not sure this is the right question to be asking given the gravity of the present situation.

But in the spirit of collegiality, I will say that I’m fairly sure the government can impose legally binding restrictions quickly without the specific assent of parliament.

From midnight, a new tier four [for England] will be introduced... Tier four restrictions will apply in all tier three areas in the South East, covering Kent, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Surrey (excluding Waverley), Gosport, Havant, Portsmouth, Rother and Hastings. It will also apply in London (all 32 boroughs and the City of London) and the East of England (Bedford, Central Bedford, Milton Keynes, Luton, Peterborough, Hertfordshire, Essex (excluding Colchester, Uttlesford and Tendring).

In tier four areas, all non-essential retail will have to close, along with hairdressers, nail bars, indoor gyms and leisure facilities.
People will be advised not to travel into a tier four area.
The restrictions will last for two weeks, with the first review due on 30 December.
Those in tier four cannot mix indoors with anyone not from their household.
A stay-at-home order will be issued to residents in tier four, with those travelling to work or for education exempt.
Social mixing will be cut to meeting one person in an open public space.

For the rest of the country, the three household mixing limit has been cut from five days to just Christmas Day.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55379220

Wasn’t Lockdown 1.0 approved without Parliamentary voting?

(BTW, off-topic but couldn’t resist asking: in normal times Parliament has that delightfully démodé voting procedure where ayes go in a corridor and nays in another. In this day of remote working, how do they do it? I imagine some sort of digital polling?)

The whole of Wales will be placed under lockdown from midnight with festive plans cancelled for all but Christmas Day.

From 23 to 28 December rules had been due to be relaxed to allow people to celebrate the holidays with loved-ones. But now this is limited to just Christmas Day.

The changes mean that a Wales-wide lockdown, which was due to come into effect from 28 December, has been brought forward and will begin at midnight tonight.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-55379237

There will be a statutory instrument (SI) in the next few hours which spells out the legal force of Tier 4, and we best wait for that since throughout this pandemic there have been frequent mixing of what is advice and what is the law. Politicians themselves struggle to remember which is which, and given that around 100 SIs on the pandemic have been put out since March, it is genuinely difficult to keep on top of all the changes.

The basis behind this is that many pieces of primary legislation - the sort you see discussed in parliament and goes for Royal Assent - have enabling clauses in them, which allows the government to put forward a SI in particular circumstances, without a parliamentary vote. In many cases this goes back to the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984, which was written in anticipation of a pandemic happening. And that piece of legislation allows the government to push out the SIs. Parliament has several methods of stopping an SI if it chooses. HMG did commit, between Lockdown 1.0 and Lockdown 2.0, to get parliamentary approval before further changes, but Parliament is currently not due to sit until the New Year, but I expect there will be a debate with a vote of some sort then.

The lobby voiting system continues, but the proxy voting method, brought in for those on maternity/paternity leave, has been adapted and means voting MPs can cast votes on behalf of their colleagues. MPs need 40 MPs "present" for votes, and there needs to be 4 tellers to count the vote, plus the Speaker. So that means just 6 MPs physically present can run the entire House of Commons, though probably it needs 7 to enable both Aye and Nay. The House of Lords, of course, has a straightforward digital online voting system where votes can be cast remotely by peers wherever they are on t'interweb.