The formal notice of poll has now been issued for each constituency. I’ve done a quick gender breakdown, and comparison with the notice of poll for the last General Election in 2016.

Constituency	Total 2021	M/W 2021	Total 2016	M/W 2016
Arbory	4	4/0	7	6/1
Ayre	8	6/2	6	5/1
Douglas Cent	4	2/2	6	3/3
Douglas East	7	3/4	8	5/3
Douglas Nor	4	4/0	5	3/2
Douglas Sou	4	2/2	4	3/1
Garff	5	4/1	5	4/1
Glenfaba	7	6/1	3	3/0
Middle	5	3/2	4	4/0
Onchan	5	4/1	5	4/1
Ramsey	8	7/1	5	5/0
Rushen	4	3/1	5	5/0
TOTALS	65	48/17	63	50/13

Compared with the last General Election, nationally, a very similar number of candidates for the 24 seats, with a modestly higher proportion of women candidates (26% as opposed to 21%). Considering conversion from candidates to MHKs, the numbers are very small, and small changes in particular constituencies can have a big effect – for instance, if there had been a 42 vote swing in one constituency in  2011, 12.5% of the Keys would have been women, as opposed to the 8.33% who were elected (against 11% of candidates in that election being women). Nonetheless, the 2016 and 2011 elections had women candidates elected at very much the same rate as men. It will be interesting to see if something similar happens in September.

The elections are resolved in constituencies, rather than nationally, and so it is worth breaking those national figures down a little. The number of constituencies with no women standing has reduced substantially, from 4 to 2. In one constituency (Douglas East) there are more women than men standing. This is, perhaps surprisingly, not the first time this has happened in an election to the Keys. Marion Shimmin, the first woman MHK, was elected unopposed at a by-election in 1933 (so would be 0/1 on my table). In 2001 both candidates for the single seat in Peel were women (so would be 0/2 on my table). In two other Douglas constituencies there are the same number of men and women standing – Douglas Central (which was in this position in 2011) being joined by Douglas South. In both elections, there are 5 constituencies with only one woman on the ballot for the two seats.

The response to a useful Freedom of Information Request has now been published by the Isle of Man Government, on the freedom of information site. This link should lead to the response from the Department of Home Affairs.

The data provided covers March 2020 through to March 2021. In that period there were 215 arrests for coronavirus offences (which from the question asked, means offences under the EPR and PHR), 35 being arrests of juveniles. Seventy-one persons received a custodial sentence for breach of the EPR/PHR. Thirty-seven fixed penalty notices were issued.

The report by the Chief Constable, referred to in the FOI response, provides useful additional data.

• The 215 arrests were clustered, unsurprisingly, around the three lockdowns, with 84 in the first lockdown, 42 in the second, and 27 in the third, for a total of 153, or 70% of the total.
•  Coronavirus arrests outside of lockdowns never reached 9% of the total arrests in non-lockdown months. During lockdown one, nearly 50% of arrests were coronavirus arrests, dropping to under 30% in both lockdown two and lockdown three.
• The 215 arrests represent arrests of 190 different individuals (overwhelmingly, male adults). Seventeen were arrested twice, and four arrested three times (including three juveniles).
• The report includes data on convictions, which puts the seventy-one custodial sentences in context. At the time of the report, 87 offences had resulted in conviction. Although this isn’t broken down into multiple offences prosecuted against the same person, 20 of the 134 offences were part of “multiple cases brought against … 9 individuals”. If we are conservative, and assume that the 87 convictions were all in relation to different individuals, 81% of coronavirus prosecutions resulted in a custodial sentence.
• A total of 2361 reports were made from the public relating to coronavirus incidents. In the lockdown only (which is the focus of the report), there were 1968 reports. In the three lockdowns, 767 individuals were warned for breaching the coronavirus regulations.

A couple of final comments.

Firstly, fixed penalty notices were not available until late in April 2020. The biggest month for coronavirus arrests (April 2020, with 54 of 131 arrests equalling more than 40% of all arrests) had already been and gone. Nonetheless, it is striking how many more people were imprisoned for breaches of the PHR than received fixed penalty notices for these breaches. Not every PHR offence could be dealt with by a fixed penalty notice, but I would still have expected to see them having a bigger role. It may be, however, that the police chose to give warnings rather than fixed penalty notices wherever possible; so that a situation which was viewed as too serious for a warning was often also too serious for a fixed penalty notice. I think fixed penalty notices have an important role to play if we return to more legal intervention in the transmission of coronavirus in the Manx community, but it would be worth reflecting on why did not receive much more significant use in the past.

Secondly, 81% of convictions for a broad category of offences resulting in custodial sentences is striking. If someone has access to the Manx custodial sentences breakdown I would be very grateful for it, and will update the blog accordingly. In the meantime, a comparison with 2020 in England and Wales might be useful. A custody rate of 34% across all indictable offences (i.e. the more serious criminal offences) was noted as “the highest in a decade”. A useful public access overview from 2017, by Civitas, breaks down the percentage of offenders who received a custodial sentence by broad category of offence. The Manx EPR/PHR custodial sentence rate is higher every offence in Graph 2 of the report, which includes robbery (described in the report as having the highest custody rate, but other lawyers, like me, would want to finesse that to take account of the mandatory life sentence for murder), sexual offences, and violence against the person.

That the custody rate for EPR/PHR violations was extraordinarily high will not come as any surprise, and may spark another round of international interest in Manx sentencing policy. One of my ongoing criticisms of the EPR/PHR is that the power to create criminal offences under the Regulations was used too bluntly. Those creating offences under the Regulations invariably set the maximum sentence at the maximum allowed by law. Setting a different range of maximum sentences would have allowed communication to the judiciary of different degrees of seriousness for different violations. If there is a return to more legal intervention to deal with coronavirus, it would be useful for any criminal offences created as part of that intervention to reflect differing degrees of seriousness by differing maximum sentences. Knowingly violating a self-isolation direction following a positive test, for instance, feels to me a different order of magnitude of seriousness from failing to require customers to wear face masks in your shop.

At the end of July a GC moved France out of the standard UK based category, into Category 3 for adults seeking the vaccine exemption, and Category 2 for children using the secondary vaccine exemption.

GC 2021/89 has cancelled this, so that for Manx purposes France is, once again, categorised as decided by the English government.

At the end of July CoMin issued four directions under the new powers under the PHR to specify details for the vaccination exemption.

GC 2021/0084 adds Johnson and Johnson’s Janssen to the list of qualifying vaccination, with a two week period required following the full completion of the course of vaccination.

GC 2021/0086 departs from the English categories 1-3 by classing France as a category 3 country for the purposes of regulation 5A (so making travellers from France unable to use the vaccination exemption; but perhaps not invalidating vaccinations received in France – in any  case see below), and category 2 for the purposes of 5B (allowing children travelling with adults to whom the vaccination exemption applies). My reading of this is that a child who has been in France within ten days of entering the Isle of Man can make use of the secondary vaccination exemption so long as the fully vaccinated parent or guardian with who they travel has not been in France within ten days. So a fully vaccinated parent could travel to the UK to collect a child who has been, say, on a school trip in France; but could not collect them directly from France without losing the vaccination exemption.

GC 2021/0087 adds four clinical trials to the vaccination exemption, allowing those who have completed vaccination with Valneva, Novovax, Com-COV and Com-COV 2 more than 14 days before entering the Isle of Man to make use of the vaccination exemption.

 GC 2021/0088 deals with the issue of where a qualifying vaccination is received. The Regulations limit the vaccination exemption to vaccinations received in “relevant countries”. This direction defines relevant country as “any country”. So, so long as the other requirements for the vaccination exemption are met, the location in which the vaccine was received is no longer significant. This seems sensible, but does mean that vaccinations received in any of the more than 190 countries of the world will satisfy the exemption, which may pose administrative problems. Bhutan for instance, has been very active in providing its population with complete courses of vaccinations accepted by the PHRs. I have no idea what Bhutan’s proof of vaccination looks like.