This explanation is not quite correct, and further highlights weak drafting in Wales and UK.

However being someone who works on legislation, and being married to someone who works on regulation, has already led to extensive discussion on what constitutes a picnic. https://twitter.com/andrewrtdavies/status/1260525892264214528

For those interested they conclusion is thus:

A) No picnic paraphernalia can be used. This includes picnic boxes; plates; or cloths;

B) Food can be eaten, and non-alcoholic drinks consumed while sedentary in the course of a walk; but

C) The destination of that walk must not be the spot of consumption.

These apply to both regulations. And from what I can see Vaughan did not break the rules under either version of the regulations.

how Vaughan’s behaviour is being interpreted by his critics raises a number of their assumptions and further questions.

1. The purchasing of chips is not in question. Merely the location and length of time taken for their consumption.

2. If we take the first we have to ask...

Whether anything consumed on a picnic table is automatically a picnic?

Presumably the answer is no, as that would be an adventurous proposition.

Picnic is of course defined as a meal eaten outside. Is chips a meal in of itself? Probably not most would say.

At the very least few would surely consider them to be a picnic food.

3. Now the length of time. The explanatory paragraph using the word prolonged. This itself is problematic, but if we run with it we need to ask is 15min too long to eat chips? Again surely not.

But if you want [mistakenly in my view] to call chips eaten sat down outside a picnic, then you have to ask is 15mins too long for a picnic. Against surely not.

So what we’re left with is someone buying a food and eating that food (without keeping in motion) in a reasonable amount of time.

I can’t see anything wrong in that.