Thursday, February 23, 2006

Guy Fawke's Bill?

In the United Kingdom a new Bill is now before Parliament which will explosively undermine the traditional powers of the British Parliament to debate, approve or disapprove legislation prepared by the Cabinet in its function to create, change or annul laws governing British subjects and those under the souvereignity of the British Crown.

The Bill is called the: "Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill"

In the United Kingdom it is so that laws are not codified periodically as under the
Continental Napoleonic Codes (of Legislation). This means that all legislation that has been passed in the past is still in effect, if it can be found, that is. In order to get rid of superfluous Laws, Ministers of the Crown can draft Orders to amend or annull these laws. The Orders will then receive the full Parliamentary treatment of appreciation, debate, amendment and vote after which the new laws will supersede the old ones.

The new "Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill" will give Ministers of the Crown the option to disregard the full Parliamentary route to legislation, instead choosing to seek the consultation of those groups that the Minister deems representative of society affected by the legislation concerned, if Parliament affirms this. It will be at the discretion of the Minister to decide whether the law is merely a revision of existing Legislation or Regulation.

"(1) A Minister of the Crown may by order make provision for either or both of the following purposes
(a) reforming legislation;

(b) implementing recommendations of any one or more of the United Kingdom Commissions, with or without changes."


Blair and the Labour Party are running massive amounts of Legislation through the Legislative process. So much in fact that Parliament is seen as a bottleneck. In order to overcome the bottleneck a bypass must be created in order to get it all pushed through before the time of Blair and his band of Brothers is up. It is already bad that so many laws are created at all, indicative of the Utopian mindset of Blair and his supporters. The creation of a new process of Legislation to bypass Parliamentary checks and balances is extremism. It is extremism because it puts all power in the hands of a few people, who will be able to do their work without outside interference by a counterforce that balances their power.

Existing Legislation are not just laws that passed by proper Parliamentary approval, or very old laws that have been found agreeable with the fabric of British Life and Tradition. But also the rules and ordinances written and issued by the many regulatory bodies that have sprung up as a part of the State. These organisations issue rules that have general application for individuals and groups of people, bind them and therefore have the same working as Laws, although they are not so officially and have a lower status in Courts if they are found contravening proper legislation:

"(b)any Order in Council, order, rules, regulations, scheme, warrant, byelaw or other subordinate instrument made under a public general Act or local Act,"

But whether or not an Order, amending, annulling or scrapping Legislation can be passed without Parliamentary scrutiny is still in the power of Parliament. So Parliament retains the power to be bypassed or not. So it would seem there is no problem.

However, the framing of the "Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill" is a written admission by the Government that it is passing so much Legislation, that it is so activistic in its law making, that the capacity of Parliament falls short of ensuring that proposed legislation is properly vetted. If this capacity is then insufficient, due to the amount of Legislation pushed through the Parliamentary filter, how can Parliament then find the capacity to judge whether an Ministerial Order can indeed be rubber stamped for the Quick and Dirty bypass?

1 comment:

MZ said...

If indeed this is happening, this is very upsetting. The last remark hits home.

The Parliament will only be able to ascertain *after the fact* if they rightfully accepted to bypass itself or not. It begs for knowledge that one cannot know in advance the body of Parliament has, but one can asses if it will pass through Parliament the proper way.

Eventually it will even discredit Parliament, and in doing so, make the Government more powerfull still. Why? Because the Parliament will make wrong decisions here and there, and as such will be seens as less competent, which in turn will lead to a demand for stronger Government.