Coffey’s ban on jargon, legal waffle, and ‘Oxford commas’

HEALTH Secretary Therese Coffey pledged to fix social care, ambulance delays, NHS backlogs and GP access when she took office this month.

But advice issued to staff at the Department for Health and Social Care this week suggests that grammar may also be top of her priority list.

Civil servants were told to limit briefings to two pages, ‘avoid jargon, legalistic or “policy wonk” ’ and even refrain from using Oxford commas – a comma placed after the penultimate item in a list, before ‘and’ or ‘or’.

Its name is derived from being traditionally required by the Oxford University Press. But in English, it is generally deemed unnecessary apart from where lists involve pairs, such as ‘red and white, and green and blue’.

The document – originally uploaded on the Department for Health and Social Care intranet page and also issued to the UK Health Security Agency – also asks employees to ‘avoid double negatives’.

Last night sources at the Department for Health said the advice did not come from the Deputy Prime Minister but from her office.

However, in 2013 Miss Coffey declared on social media that she ‘abhors’ the Oxford comma.