What's The Problem?
The boringly-named Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill started life as an extremely dangerous piece of legislation. It had the power to grant any minister the ability to amend, replace, or repeal existing legislation. The frightening thing is this: they would have been able to make major changes to the law without Parliament being able to examine it properly, taking away the ability of Parliament to meaningfully represent the citizens of this country.
More worryingly, the minister involved could have amended almost any existing legislation; nothing was protected. So, as was pointed out in The Times by 6 law professors from Cambridge, a minister would have been able to abolish trial by jury, suspend habeas corpus (your right not to be arbitrarily arrested), or change any of the legislation governing the legal system, with the only exceptions being the Bill itself and the Human Rights Act.
That would have been 700 years of democracy and the rule of law, thrown away in a heartbeat. What's left of the Magna Carta, the foundation of just about all modern democracies, would have been finally gone, and our Parliament, which has influenced democratic systems all over the world, would just be a footnote in history.
Is It Safe Now?
Most of the dangerous aspects of the Bill have been removed. Some (though not many) were removed by the House of Commons, but most of the major fixes have been done in the House of Lords. Assuming the the Government doesn't vote against the Lords amendments (which they still could, but it's unlikely), the Bill is a lot better. As it now stands, it is only a little more dangerous than the existing Regulatory Reform Act 2001, which it is supposed to replace.
What Is It For?
Ministers claim that the bill is needed to allow them to cut down on red tape, to help eliminate unnecessary regulation and bureaucracy without having to go through the full Parliamentary process, thus speeding up the whole process and making it more efficient.
However, the limitations in the bill did not adequately restrict it only to that use. It could have be used to change almost any legislation. The best the government could do (until forced) was to promise not the use the Bill for anything "controversial".
What's Left To Do?
Legislation should be written so that it cannot be abused. The potential for abuse in the LRRB is not much higher that the RRA 2001, but it is higher. There is no real justification for the Bill, and seeing as it is still potentially dangerous, we will continue to oppose it until it is properly fixed.
The government could do everything it says it wants to do with existing legislation. It says that the new legislation is required to make things simpler, but the problem with the current legislation is not that it is too complex, it is just that it is hardly ever used. The government should try harder to make full use of the existing powers, not introduce new ones just because they feel like it.
There are also some outstanding problems with the Bill. If the government must pass this Bill, we would want them to make the following amendments:
- Make sure Parliament can inspect all orders made under the Bill.
- The Bill gives the government the option to give Parliament only a few days to inspect orders. We would like them to have to use the "super-affirmative procedure", which gives Parliament (and the public) 60 days to examine orders, and which guarantees a debate in the House of Commmons. This will make sure that orders cannot be passed without someone noticing.
- Make sure orders are actually reasonable.
- One of the few protections in the Bill currently is that the Minister making the order should "consider" that it is required. This is a subjective test, so the courts would find it practically impossible to challenge an order, as a Minister could always say that he "considered" it to be necessary. If this wording is removed from the Bill, then orders must actually be necessary, which would be testable in a court of law. This makes the protections in the Bill much more effective. Even senior government figures have called the current safeguards "inadequate".
- Remove ambiguity about forcible entry
- The Bill could currently be used to alter the law on when forced entry can be used, for instance by the Police and other authorities. This is not relevant to the stated purpose of the Bill (reducing red tape), so it should be removed.
