Blackburn no travel guidance not law, Number 10 confirms A GOVERNMENT spokesman has confirmed that new guidance affecting eight Indian Variant hotspot areas is ‘not statutory’. No 10 said it wanted to move away from “top-down edicts” as lockdown restrictions ease, and stressed it was for individuals to make a judgment on how to behave. The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “It is important to emphasise that this is guidance, these are not statutory restrictions placed on those local areas. “We have talked before about where we are at this stage in the pandemic in the UK, where we are able to move away from top-down edicts from the Government and start transitioning to a position where we have moved back to where the public are able to exercise their good judgment, as they have done throughout.