Stormont covid law wrongly describes Dr Naresh Chada as ‘Minister of Health’ – but legislation still has legal force, says department

Last Thursday, after a tortuous period of indecision by the Executive, ministers eventually agreed to extend the four weeks of restrictions into a fifth week.

But as part of Stormont’s wider moves to prepare hospitality businesses for re-opening, the following day legislation was also made by the Department of Health which gave councils the power to designate persons to enforce restrictions and to issue a “premises improvement notice” where those responsible for premises are in breach of the restrictions.

That legislation – The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (Amendment No. 14) – says that it was sealed with the official seal of the department at 4pm on Friday by “Dr Naresh Chada, Minister of Health”.

Dr Chada is the deputy chief medical officer and Robin Swann has been Health Minister for almost a year.

The News Letter asked the department if the regulations had legal force if they have been sealed incorrectly.

The department said: “Article 6(2) of the Departments (Northern Ireland) Order 1999 states that the application of the seal of a department shall be authenticated by the signature of— (a) the minister; or (b) a senior officer of that department.

“The seal has been duly applied and authenticated by the signature of a senior officer, so all has been done that needs to be done to make the regulations. The fact that the status of the signatory has been misdescribed is no different to any other typo and has been rectified.

“So the regulations are in force.”

Last week the Executive was forced to take the extraordinary step of admitting that ministers had been wrongly advising the public that the restrictions then in force would end 24 hours before the point at which their own legislation said they would end – because the way in which the legislation had been written confused even Stormont’s lawyers.

There have been a series of typographical errors in the covid legislation, as well as more substantive mistakes which have had to be corrected by new legislation.

One of the reasons for the errors is likely to be not just the volume of legislation which is being produced, but the scant time which the Executive is giving officials to draft regulations because they are repeatedly leaving decisions until the last minute.

That problem is then exacerbated by the fact that the regulations become law immediately without any scrutiny by the Assembly and in most cases the regulations are only considered by the Assembly and voted on weeks after they become law, and often after they have been superseded by new laws.

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