‘Parliament could harness the power of technology to provide a system to lawmakers that gives them the ability to test speculatively the knock-on effects of legislative changes while they are considering bills, according to IT guru Professor Richard Susskind.’
Legal Futures, 16th January 2017
Source: www.legalfutures.co.uk
‘The Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law published a new Briefing Paper on 29 September 2016. Titled “Parliament and the Rule of Law in the Context of Brexit”, it aims to inform the work of Parliament by setting out preliminary rule of law issues relating to Brexit.’
UK Constitutional Law Association, 5th October 2016
Source: www.ukconstitutionallaw.org
‘This is the Law Commission’s final report on the form and accessibility of the law applicable in Wales.’
official-documents.gov.uk, 30th June 2016
Source: official-documents.gov.uk
“Justice – Tom Sargant memorial lecture 2013, 15th October 2013.”
CrimeLine, 15th October 2013
Source: www.crimeline.info
“Criminal offences of encouraging and assisting crimes are too ‘complex and difficult’ for lawyers to understand, according to a high profile committee of MPs.”
Law Society’s Gazette, 13th September 2013
Source: www.lawgazette.co.uk
“I’ve been following the Parliamentary Counsel’s laudable ‘good law’ initiative with interest (details on the Cabinet Office site here). The aim of the initiative is to have law that is #necessary, clear, coherent, effective and accessible’. The focus, perhaps naturally for the OPC, is on the complexity and drafting of legislation. Their document ‘When laws become too complex’ is well worth a read for anyone who regularly deals with legislation.The first thing that strikes me is that this initiative is really about good legislation rather than good law since case law doesn’t get much of a mention. But, for the sake of argument, let’s agree that good legislation gets us half way to good law and is worth our consideration.”
Halsbury’s Law Exchange, 20th June 2013
Source: www.halsburyslawexchange.co.uk
“On the 20 of May the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee (the PCR) published its report on legislative scrutiny standards titled ‘Ensuring standards in the quality of legislation’. The Report contains two eye catching and ambitious proposals for parliamentary reform: the creation of a joint committee on legislative standards and the adoption of a code of legislative standards. This blog is about the second of these proposals. The proposal is a significant one, and if implemented it would dramatically improve the information available to parliamentarians in their scrutiny of government bills. The PCR’s code is in effect a series of questions and demands for information relating to the content and to the timetable of a bill, that the government would answer within the explanatory notes to a bill. In this blog post, I draw attention to the code proposed by the PRC and I offer a critique of their approach, and in particular of the decision not to include substantive legislative standards.”
UK Constitutional Law Group, 14th June 2013
Source: www.ukconstitutionallaw.org
“Internet users who are suspected of illegally downloading copyrighted material will not be sent warning letters about their behaviour until the second half of 2015 at the earliest, the Government has confirmed.”
OUT-LAW.com, 10th June 2013
Source: www.out-law.com
“The increasing use emergency legislation, lack of adequate debating time and insertion of last-minute amendments are preventing effective parliamentary scrutiny of new laws, a committee has said.”
The Guardian, 15th April 2013
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
“Tenants are to be given the right to challenge rogue letting agents for the first time after the government agreed at the 11th hour to a legislative amendment requiring all agents to sign up to a mandatory redress scheme.”
The Guardian, 16th April 2013
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
“Parliamentary legislation is excessively complex and its confusions undermine the rule of law, according to the official in charge of drafting government statutes.”
The Guardian, 16th April 2013
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
“Four million employees could miss out on employer pension contributions until 2017 because poorly drafted legislation has left a loophole in auto-enrolment, the Government’s flagship pensions policy.”
Daily Telegraph, 19th November 2012
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
“Thomas Pascoe in the Telegraph gives a familiar layperson’s lament about the amount and complexity of legislation in the UK.”
Halsbury’s Law Exchange, 31st July 2012
Source: www.halsburyslawexchange.co.uk
O(B) v Director of the Serious Fraud Office: [2012] EWCA Crim 901; [2012] WLR (D) 133
“In contempt of court cases, there was a right of appeal to the Supreme Court from the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, by the route of rectification of section 378 and paragraph 45(2) of Schedule 16 to the Armed Forces Act 2006 which had deleted the reference to the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division and inserted no new reference. The substance of the provision Parliament would have made had the drafting error been noticed, occasioned no difficulty. All that would have been required was the insertion of express wording following ‘Court of Appeal’ in section 13(2)(c) of the Administration of Justice Act 1960 (as amended) making it plain that ‘Court of Appeal’ encompassed both civil and criminal divisions. The rectification preserved an important right of appeal and avoided an outcome which had no rational justification.”
WLR Daily, 2nd May 2012
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
Flachglas Torgau GmbH v Federal Republic of Germany: (Case C-204/09); [2012] WLR (D) 45
“The option given to member states pursuant to the first sentence of the second sub-paragraph of article 2(2) of Parliament and Council Directive 2003/4/EC of not regarding ‘bodies or institutions acting in a … legislative capacity’ as ‘public authorities’ responsible for guaranteeing access to environmental information, could be applied to ministries to the extent that they participated in the legislative process, in particular by tabling draft laws or giving opinions.”
WLR Daily, 14th February 2012
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
“Last minute transitional arrangements have been announced to facilitate a smooth transition for provisions in the Localism Act and to close a drafting loophole. The arrangements are set out in a Commencement Order, following the enactment of the Localism Act In November 2011.”
OUT-LAW.com, 20th January 2012
Source: www.out-law.com
“As Stephen Levinson’s recent post has reminded us, we are not living in a golden age of legislative drafting. In the field of criminal law, some particularly ghastly examples of bamboozling legislation can be found in various provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 – described by no less an authority than Rose LJ as ‘at best, obscure and, at worst, impenetrable’ (R v Campell [2006] EWCA Crim 726, [2006] 2 Cr App R (S) 626 at [1]).”
Halsbury’s Law Exchange, 2nd November 2011
Source: www.halsburyslawexchange.co.uk
“‘Good regulation is a good thing’ is the trite introduction to the government’s red tape challenge, before saying we have too much of the other sort. The proposition is that reducing the quantity of regulation is the answer. This is myopic because if quantity is one possible burden on business, so is poor quality law. Poor quality is not about political or policy disagreements, but simply the production of badly-drafted law that is difficult to understand, because it is too complex or simply unclear.”
Halsbury’s Law Exchange, 28th October 2011
Source: www.halsburyslawexchange.co.uk
“A ‘tsunami’ of legislation means laws are being passed without proper scrutiny, peers have told the BBC.”
BBC News, 5th September 2011
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
“In a secret location in the UK, there is a warehouse the size of a football pitch that climbs five storeys into the sky. Under its gargantuan roof are more than three million boxes and, in these boxes, are thousands and thousands of files and innumerable documents.”
Law Society’s Gazette, 23rd June 2011
Source: www.lawgazette.co.uk
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