Emergency Power Regulations made on 1st and 2nd of April.

Four Regulations were made on the 1^st and 2^nd of April.

Two of these Regulations concern use of the roads. Normally, a person driving a dangerous good vehicle must have completed a basic training course, and for some particularly hazardous loads, more specialised training (more information is here) The Road Vehicles Carrying Dangerous Good Regulations allows the Department of Infrastructure to authorise persons to drive dangerous loads without having the usual certificate, following required training, needed to do so. They can do so by exempting a person from these usual rules (r.6). The Department can issue a certificate to a person who it regards as “vital to the Island’s critical national infrastructure” (r.5(1)), and may impose conditions on any certification (r.5(3)). More broadly the Speed Limits (no.2) Regulations replace the earlier Regulations (noted here). The form of the Regulation which creates a new 40 mile per hour national speed limit is substantially different  (r.4). There are two substantive changes. Firstly, the DTI has flexibility outside town or village districts to set a different speed limit by order – this may be higher or lower than 40 mph (r.4(3)). The earlier Regulation only allowed for an order to set lower speed limits. Secondly, there is an express exemption to the temporary general speed limits outside such districts for “any vehicle operated by, or on behalf of, the Department of Infrastructure, Department of Home Affairs, or the Department of Health and Social Care” (r4(4)). This exemption does not apply to limits created by specific order of the Department of Infrastructure, only to the 40 mile per hour default (Road Traffic Regulation Act 1985 s.23(1)(b) without any modification of the section, per r.4(4)). So if the Department sets a speed limit of 50 mph for a section of road, that limit applies to the vehicles listed. It should be noted, however, that the existing statutory exemption from any speed limit for vehicles used by the emergency services remains intact (Road Traffice Regulation Act 1985 s.27).

The Competition Regulations modify existing competition law. Any agreement or arrangement entered into in order to secure the supply to persons in the Islands of goods or services does not constitute an anti-competitive practice (cl.4(1)), unless the Office of Fair Trading declares that a particular agreement or arrangement of this kind is not in the public interest (cl.4(2)). So, for instance, food retailers could agree to share customers on the basis of efficient delivery routes without the normal implications for competition law. If they were to cooperate in a way the OFT regarded as not in the public interest, however, the normal laws could be enforced against them.

Finally, the Special Constables (no2) Regulation replace the earlier Regulations (noted here). The new Regulation is almost identical to the one it replaces, except with the addition of a detailed Schedule on subsistence and refreshment allowances which, as was noted during the process of approval of the earlier Regulations in Tynwald, was referred to in cl.5(9) but absent from the earlier Regulations. The Schedule explains how the Department must approach these allowances, rather than providing detail on amounts payable. It also provides as, an alternative to being paid the allowance under these Regulations, that a special constable may “be paid a subsistence allowance at such rate as is payable to members of Tynwald and members of the Isle of Man Civil Service” (Schedule, cl3). My reading of the Schedule is that this gives flexibility to the Department as to how it chooses to cover these expenses, not a right by a special constable to choose how their expenses are calculated.