We break down the rules and regulations in place at the time of No 10’s alleged BYOB bash.

14 Jan 2022 | Full Fact's weekly news
View in your browser ([link removed])

FACT CHECK
Party or no party? Here’s what the rules said at the time

The Prime Minister this week admitted to having attended a drinks party in the garden of Number 10 Downing Street in May of 2020 (although said he believed it was a “work event”), when the country was in lockdown. So what did the rules in England say at the time?

The law said “no person may participate in a gathering in a public place of more than two people” - unless it was for one of a number of stated reasons. These included when the gathering was “essential for work purposes” or “all the persons in the gathering are members of the same household”.

However, the Downing Street garden is not a public space. For most of those allegedly attending, it may have been part of their workplace.

The workplace guidelines that applied in May 2020 do not say whether social gatherings between colleagues in the workplace were permitted, although they do advise that different teams should usually avoid mixing “as far as possible”.

The guidelines also say that meetings should usually be limited to “only absolutely necessary participants”. It also advised that these should be held outdoors or in well ventilated areas when possible. A separate document also said “workers should try to minimise all meetings and other gatherings in the workplace".

The government’s outdoor guidance on 20 May 2020 also said: “Businesses should also take reasonable steps to avoid people being gathered together.”

May 2020: The guidance and the law ([link removed])
Friend, we all deserve accuracy from our public figures

We need your support to help scrutinise what they say, and push for the record to be corrected.

When it’s never been more needed, can you help the fight for more honesty in public debate?
Chip in to help stop the spread of false claims ([link removed])
FACT CHECK: PMQs
Prime Minister’s Questionionables: Round 2 ([link removed])

❌ Boris Johnson: “It is an astonishing fact that we have 420,000 more people in work now than before the pandemic began.”

This is not true. There are more payrolled employees, but the total number of people in paid work, including the self-employed, is below the level seen just prior to the pandemic. When you include all workers, the figure is about half a million lower.

🤔 Boris Johnson: “We have…the fastest growing economy in the G7.”

That’s true if you look at change over the most recent 12 months of data. If you look at growth over the last quarter of data (comparing the second and third quarters of 2021), the UK places fifth.

PMQs: Employment ([link removed])
PMQs: Economy ([link removed])
POLICY
80 fact checkers from around the world write open letter to YouTube ([link removed])

YouTube is allowing its platform to be weaponised by unscrupulous actors to manipulate and exploit others. The current measures are insufficient. That’s why we've signed a joint letter urging them to take effective action against bad information.

Internet companies have up until now been allowed to mark their own homework, choosing exactly how much information to share about the measures they have taken to protect users from bad information online, and the effectiveness of these measures - all of which has had to be taken on trust.

We’ve proposed four solutions to reduce the dissemination of disinformation and misinformation on YouTube.

Our letter ([link removed])
FACT CHECK
Guido Fawkes corrects ‘fact check’ incorrectly correcting the SNP… ([link removed])

The Guido Fawkes blog published an article claiming that the Scottish National Party used data on Covid prevalence that was “just not true”.

In fact, both sides correctly cited their chosen figures. The SNP used data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), while Guido used data from the government’s Covid dashboard.

The dashboard case figures are not a measure of “prevalence” (the share of people who have Covid at a given time). They are a measure of incidence (the number of new cases occurring at a given time). Whereas the ONS survey covers a representative sample of people in private households.

So it’s not right to say the SNP are wrong because the dashboard offers different evidence to the ONS survey. Guido Fawkes has amended its article and deleted its tweet about this - for which we are grateful.
Fact checkers fact check fact checking ([link removed])
MORE FACT CHECKS
Also this week...
* UK is fastest growing G7 economy by one measure, and fifth by another ([link removed])
* Breastfeeding linked to reduced risk of heart disease ([link removed])
* Betty White did not get a Covid-19 booster vaccine three days before she died ([link removed])

Read our latest fact checks ([link removed])
Stop the spread of bad information

Find these updates useful? We'd be incredibly grateful if you could share our fact checks and help more people access good information.
[link removed] Share ([link removed])
[link removed]'s%20what%20the%20rules%20said%20in%20May%202020%20-%20via%20%40FullFact: https%3A%2F%2Ffullfact.org%2Fhealth%2Foutdoor-party-rules-may-2020%2F Tweet ([link removed]'s%20what%20the%20rules%20said%20in%20May%202020%20-%20via%20%40FullFact: https%3A%2F%2Ffullfact.org%2Fhealth%2Foutdoor-party-rules-may-2020%2F)
[link removed] Forward ([link removed])
[link removed]'s%20what%20the%20rules%20said%20in%20May%202020%20-%20via%20%40FullFact Share ([link removed]'s%20what%20the%20rules%20said%20in%20May%202020%20-%20via%20%40FullFact)
All the best,
Team Full Fact

============================================================
** Follow us ([link removed])
** Donate ([link removed])
** Like us ([link removed])
** Follow us ([link removed])
Have any questions or feedback? Please ** get in touch via our contact form ([link removed])
. We do not respond to direct replies to this email address.

Find out ** how Full Fact is funded ([link removed])
.

Copyright © Full Fact 2022 - All rights reserved

A registered charity (no. 1158683) and a non-profit company (no. 6975984) limited by guarantee and registered in England and Wales.

Our mailing address is:
2 Carlton Gardens, London, SW1Y 5AA

We use Mailchimp to send you our emails and to see which articles are most popular. ** Read our privacy policy ([link removed])
or ** Mailchimp's privacy policy ([link removed])

** unsubscribe from this list ([link removed])
** update subscription preferences ([link removed])