Is the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill back?
Back in 2006, a bunch of concerned citizens were worried about an obscurely-named piece of government legislation called the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. In short, the bill’s purpose was to cut red tape, to allow ministers to amend troublesome laws on the fly without all the bother of consulting Parliament and all the tedium of democratic accountability. The bill, in the words of the Guardian’s Marcel Berlins, would make it…
…possible for the government, by ministerial order, without a debate in parliament, to create new criminal offences, punishable with less than two years imprisonment. It could also, according to Cambridge law professor John Spencer (who is not alone in his analysis), introduce house-arrest, give the police stronger powers of arrest and interrogation, set up new courts, and in effect re-write the rules on immigration, nationality, divorce, inheritance and the appointment of judges.
All very scary. I, like many others, had quite a lot to say on the matter.
In the end, thanks to some tenacious campaigning in and out of Parliament, by the time the bill became law it had been sufficiently neutered enough to assuage many concerns. One of the larger ironies was that it later emerged that, despite the fears on one side and the assurances on the other, the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act did not repeal or amend a single law in its first year of existence.
Now, however, it seems the government is resurrecting the spirit, if not the letter, of the bill. Thanks to the hawk-eyed heroes at Spyblog, we find that nestled away in Jack Straw’s new Constitutional Renewal Bill there is this:
Part 6
FINAL PROVISION43 Power to make consequential provision
(1) A Minister of the Crown, or two or more Ministers of the Crown acting jointly, may by order make such provision as the Minister or Ministers consider appropriate in consequence of this Act.
(2) An order under subsection (1) may –
(a) amend, repeal or revoke any provision made by or under an Act;
(b) include transitional or saving provision.
(3) An order under subsection (1) is to be made by statutory instrument.
(4) A statutory instrument containing an order under subsection (1) which amends or repeals a provision of an Act may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.
(5) A statutory instrument containing an order under subsection (1) which does not amend or repeal a provision of an Act is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.
Now, as Tom at Blairwatch points out, this clause allows ministers to amend laws created under this bill only. It does not give a free hand to amend any and all laws willy-nilly as the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill did in its original form.
That said, we are talking about bill concerned with constitutional changes – you know, stuff fundamental to our democracy. I’m still ploughing through the draft bill so I’m not entirely sure just how worried we should be at this stage.
I suppose you could take one of two views on this – whichever people take, the government only have themselves to blame. The first would suggest that New Labour ministers hold democracy in contempt – they’ve never been very keen on openness or accountability or parliamentary scrutiny and are more fans of the sofa government and the backroom fix. As such, the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill and the clause in Straw’s new bill are manifestations of that.
The second view, which I’m more inclined to take at this moment in time, is that these things are like backdoors in computer systems. I think they’re a tacit admission by the government that they’ve been experts at passing spectacularly bad laws over the last 11 years. And so, they’ve learned the trick of the self-amending law. If something goes wrong, they can sneak in the back and tinker with the law until it’s running a little more smoothly. It does away with all the hassle of having to admit that they’ve cocked up.
I wonder if all of this isn’t anything more sinister than New Labour knowing they’re, well, a bit crap, and are fed up with it being pointed out all the time.
Anyway. Definitely one to be aware of and one to watch.
(More at Ministry of Truth)
Posted on March 28th, 2008 at 8:57am under L.A.R.R.B., UK politics
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They’re certainly crap at making laws – but those are fairly easy to fix. The really terrifying thing is just how much they’ve cocked up the constitution.
- Scrapping the oldest office of the crown only to be told that, erm… they don’t have the authority? Check.
- Diminishing that office by splicing it with a newly-created (largely synonymous) Justice Secretary, and then handing that office to Jack Straw? Check.
- Using the Parliament Act to force legislation pas the neutered Lords more times in a decade than it had been in the preceding five? Check.
- Introducing a Human Rights Act, supposedly inviolable, before realising that giving the people rights means the government has to, erm… abide by that agreement – and then repeatedly trying to wriggle out of their commitment? Check.
- Changing the language of all subsequent attempts at constitutional reform by using the phrase “rights and obligations” whenever referring to the people who must abide by their latest whim? Check.
And, of course, the most significant:
- Reforming the House of Lords with nothing to put in its place? Check.
- Having already buggered up the Lords once, proposing further reforms to create a diminished second chamber elected on a popular basis but with no concurrent revision of either its purpose or that of the Commons, meaning the Lords will have to function on two-thirds the number of members, and will be utterly unable to give future bills the scrutiny they need? Check.
And those are just off the top of my head.
The thing that really surprises me is how they don’t seem to realise that the changes they’ve made and are making to increase government power could equally well be used by the Tories when they get back into office. Unless that’s the reason for the recent noises about electoral reform (based, as far as I can tell, on the chaotic and impossible-to-understand system used to elect Harriet Harman Deputy Leader).
God, they’re a shower of incompetent (devious? Dunno…) shits. It’s almost enough to make me commit categorically to voting Tory. Almost…
Introducing a Human Rights Act, supposedly inviolable, before realising that giving the people rights means the government has to, erm… abide by that agreement – and then repeatedly trying to wriggle out of their commitment? Check.
I’ll have to blog this properly next week, but my read on from what’s already filtering out of the MoJ by way of ‘let’s start the denate’ speeches is Straw’s ‘British Bill of Rights’ is that it will try to do two things.
One will be to try to reign in the judiciary by finding ways to define in law not just what our rights are but how they should be interpreted in law.
And the second will be to try to draw demarcation lines between the rights of British citizens and the rights of non-citizens, which will amount to watering down HRA for Johnny Foreigner to make it a bit easier to toss him out the country.
You don’t know if this government is devious? I despair.
[...] Update: Justin offers some analysis of this: [...]
Unity – is this my long-awaiting Dangerous Judges Act? I know a few people who’ll have something to say about that; there’s long been a low-grade insurrection amongst m’learned friends who already know who’s in charge of interpreting things, viz. them (and ultimately the ECHR in Strasbourg, who won’t give a toss what Jack does) and who don’t trust Jack and co. to run a whelk stall. With good reason, it has to be said; there’s a lot of previous where a judge has made a perfectly valid finding agains some Home Office outrage only to find tabloids on his neck and the actual culprit hiding behind the headlines.
Secondly the concept of a Some Humans’ Rights Act drives a coach and four through quite a lot of things we’ve signed up to internationally, although there are obviously cases where this already (presumably legally) exists, like benefits entitlement, visas, work permits etc. where Johnny Foreigner has his life made difficult. Extending that to actual fundamental human rights strikes me as a step too far, though. Of course, the idea that the ECHR itself is explicitly designed to adapt to changing times and is therefore open to them to edit (if they can negotiate agreement on it) is conspicuous by its absence.
There’s also the obvious point that a Bill of Rights is approximately nowhere on the list of what a rational constitutional physician would prescribe for Mr. UK’s various ills; where’s a better voting system, extending devolution, reducing the power of the Civil Service, abolishing the establishment of the C of E, extending Freedom of Information etc.?