You need to speak to HR, as a team, about the company-wide policies. This new manager isn’t the head of a small company and shouldn’t be treating staff any differently than how other staff at the company are generally treated in term of working conditions.
Sounds like he is very focussed on presenteeism, rather than monitoring actual productivity. These type of managers are a pain in the ass.
Why is he concerned about what you do in your lunch breaks. That’s the most concerning issues of all here, if it’s unpaid time, he has no rights whatsoever to even ask what you do during that time. The only caveats would be if he suspected someone was drinking alcohol etc and it impacted their performance, or staff are doing something while wearing a company uniform that puts the company reputation at risk (such as getting caught shoplifting).
The only thing I can think of is that because he is so strict on presenteeism, is that he is thinking that lunchtime activities risk leaking into paid work time or lateness to meetings. For example if you go to the post office and get stuck in a queue, do you abandon the task, or do you make yourself late back for work? If you put a load of laundry on, is that completely contained within the unpaid time, or are you having to go back to the machine during work hours to empty it, or running out to pick in washing off the line if it rains suddenly? If you have time-sensitive/performance driven roles, such as working in a call centre, I can see some of the logic of making a statement that lunchtime takes shouldn’t be impacting on anything during work time….but I don’t see how he can ban you altogether provided the tasks are fully contained.
As for the coffee ‘breaks’. How does he know that you don’t have a coffee machine within reach of your desk and you literally press a button, or that you don’t have someone else at home who passed in a drink to you? A cup of coffee, doesn’t mean that you have just taken a break. If avoiding breaks outside allowed times, I would make up a flask in order to have an extra cup available to pour at any point.
He’s being unreasonable, but when speaking to HR, don’t make it too much about the coffee. Instead focus on what the company policy is in relation to DSE, which is covered also by UK law. The general guidance is that you should have a 5-10 min break from working at the screen every hour. So unless your job has non-screen activities, which remote jobs often don’t…you should be getting 5mins every hour anyway as you need to be away from that screen and you have no other tasks. So on that basis, anyone with a cup of coffee is likely to have made it during their screen break, as in theory you could be drinking 1 cup per hour just because those breaks enable a break to make it.
I would also be asking HR/upper management if he was told prior to his first day at work that his team were on WFH contracts and particularly that there are some staff members who live abroad. It’s weird that he wouldn’t know that, and it’s not his place to change something that is obviously already approved higher up.
It sounds like he is just wanting to unsettle and bully the team, and is generally an asshole. I’ve met bosses like this. The best way to deal with it is to try to get together as a group and ask HR for clarification of the company polices and make it clear to him that he can’t just make up all his own rules. Try not to make it too personal complaining about him to HR, because HR tend to support the manager in order to protect the company and often don’t give a toss about affected employees…make it about clarifying the very basics of company policy on working conditions in a positive way, you can use something like the phrase “we are asking for clarification for the wellbeing of the team, which we currently feel is being negatively affected by changes to basic working conditions, which we believe are not in accordance with company policy, our contracts or with DSE regulations” and not making a formal grievance about him. When you do that, HR and management often close ranks and go into defence mode in fear of ending up in a tribunal.
Also, as a group, ask for clarifications to be made in writing. You then have firm group to tell him “no”, if you have it in writing you can leave your desk for 5mins every hour for example, if he states you can’t.
Also, what happens if you need the toilet? Do you have to put that in your calendar for the entire company to see? That could be discriminatory, if someone on the team has a medical issue they want kept private and goes more frequently.