No, there is no Downing Street Christmas party loophole

Was 10 Downing Street really a rule-free zone when it came to the coronavirus regulations, the laws which have governed our lives to varying extents since the pandemic first erupted? Steven Barrett writing on Coffee House, says that it was: ‘the regulations almost certainly never applied to No. 10 anyway,’ he argues. I’m not convinced.

Why? Because the so-called ‘restrictions on gatherings’ were restrictions that applied to individuals wherever they were, including on Crown land.

It’s true that there is such a thing as a ‘Crown exemption rule’. In short, an Act of Parliament doesn’t bind the Crown unless there is an express provision saying so or an obvious implication that it applies. In 2017, the Supreme Court refused to revisit this rule in a case concerning whether the smoke-free legislation contained in Part 1 of the Health Act 2006 applies to Crown land. The 2006 Act did not say it bound the Crown – and, as Lady Hale pointed out, ‘nothing would have been easier than to insert such a provision’.