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Bit late with this, but still.

Government amendments (PDF, not for the faint-hearted) to the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill were smuggled out on May 4 under cover of the local elections and cabinet reshuffle madness. While the amendments were taken at face value by some and greeted as a climbdown by the Government and a victory for the protesters, others do not see any significant changes or safeguards in place.

This from Save Parliament’s latest email bulletin:

Our initial reaction to the amendments was literally, “We’ve Won!” but after careful and detailed scrutiny by ourselves and a number of law professors we have uncovered that the bill still threatens democracy in much the same way.

…

The most worrying of the amendments is the use of the Law Commission. A minister may implement Law Commission recommendations ‘with or without’ changes’. This means the minister can used the bill to amend legislation based on the minister’s inital idea, regardless of the recommendation from the Law Commission. The bill also threatens the independence of the Law Commission, which presents a huge threat to civil liberties.

The bill still does not mention business, which means a burden can be anything a minister considers to be such, unless it affects only a minister or Government department. If a minister considers that trial by jury is a burden on the police, it could be abolished, for example.

Most of the bloggers (this one included) and the (very few) journalists who were chasing this before the local elections seem to have put their feet up when they should in fact be loading for bear. Coverage has all but dried up except in a few oases.

There’s also the business regulation aspect to consider which hasn’t had the scrutiny that the constitutional ramifications have (justifiably) enjoyed. As a comment on this post on the Save Parliament blog points out:

I always said this was a big business bill, not a civil liberties issue, from what I had read about it from Gordon Brown.

Its purpose is now explicitly to unilaterally strike out health&safety and environmental legislation that gets in the way of Profits. There is no counter-balance whatsoever to this primary purpose.

I believe that they originally hid this legislative intent inside the wider and more loosely defined powers in the hope that no one will notice. Now they will have to answer unavoidable questions, like what pollution regulation do you want to get rid of? Anti-pollution regulation is very popular, which is why we have it, and why they think the only way to get rid of this obstruction to profits is by executive privilege — ie the whim of some busy minister who believes that the Buncefield oil fire was just an accident and doesn’t see why the oil companies should pay.

Tony Blair likes to boast that the UK has “one of the most flexible labour markets of any major economy”. And under the L.a.R.R.B. it’s about to get positively flaccid. “Flexible”, to my mind, is another one of those leprous euphemisms so beloved of the low-wage conservatives that comprise the current class of professional political and business leaders (embodied in the stout frame of professional misanthropist, Digby Jones). Coming from Labour mouths, it’s redolent of “the working class can kiss my arse…”. Who profits? The widows of men who died after breathing asbestos for a living? They should promise to donate a percentage of any compensation they win to New Labour’s overdraft rather than squandering their time and health in the courts. It’s clear that, in the current climate, a decent lobbyist gets you far further than a decent lawyer.

It’s also worth noting that Blairite myrmidon and Parliamentary Under-Secretary Jim Murphy, previously in charge of ramming the bill home, was promoted in the recent reshuffle and is now a minister in the Department of Work and Pensions. The bill is now being steered by the new Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the erstwhile cack-handed chief whip, Hilary Armstrong.

According to the Save Parliament blog, the Bill is to pushed through its final stages on May 15 and 16. In other words, like guff through a goose.