IMPROVING LEGISLATION
1. As well as opening up the legislative process by publishing this Draft Legislative Programme, the Government has taken a number of other steps to improve the quality of legislation and increase the degree of scrutiny which bills undergo. Public bill committees can now take written and oral evidence on government bills. More use has been made of Grand Committees of the House of Lords for committee stages of bills, consideration of statutory instruments and short debates. This chapter sets out how the Government is also reducing regulatory burdens, simplifying legislation, consulting on bills in draft and assessing laws after they have been passed.
2. The Government wants to know whether people think it is doing enough to improve legislation and if not, what more could be done to make it easier to understand.
Reducing regulatory burdens
3. The Government is committed to reducing administrative burdens on the private and third sectors by 25% by 2010. It has identified annual reductions that will save private and third sector organisations £3.5 billion by 2010, with £800 million of savings already delivered. These reductions will free up the amount of time spent complying with regulations without removing the protections regulation provides, enabling more time to be spent running businesses.
4. The Government has also recently revised the process of producing Impact Assessments, which accompany all legislation (bills and regulations). These ensure that the need for legislation is fully justified and the impacts, costs and benefits are fully assessed. The option of doing nothing in that particular area must be fully considered and any action should be assessed against this, with the benefits of any action justifying the costs. This ensures that legislation is only brought forward if there is an overriding need to do so.
5. While the Government normally applies legislation to all businesses unless there is a compelling case otherwise, it also seeks to offer flexibility for small businesses. The Government recognises that some legislation can impose a disproportionate burden on smaller businesses and that consideration could be given to devising practical exemptions when policy is developed. The Government has therefore announced that when making new legislation, it will include in the accompanying memorandum an explanation of the approach adopted towards small firms and it will examine whether small firms (of 20 employees or less and a turnover below £2.8million) can be exempted from new regulatory requirements or be subject to simpler enforcement, such as reduced paperwork or inspection requirements. And if this is not possible for legal or policy reasons the Government will work with small firms to design specific approaches for them, such as simplified guidance and forms. This new approach will apply from the 2008-09 Parliamentary session for all secondary legislation (regulations) and from 2009-10 for all primary legislation (bills).
Simplifying legislation
6. The Government is working to consolidate or simplify legislation in a number of areas:
• The fifth Bill in the Tax Law Rewrite Project was published in draft in February 2008. The Rewrite Project aims to consolidate all tax law into a small number of Acts of Parliament to make it more accessible and easier to understand;
• The Employment Bill currently going through Parliament would simplify the large body of employment law, making it easier to use for employers and employees;
• The rolling programme of Law Commission consolidation bills will continue and a new Parliamentary procedure has been agreed to speed up the enactment of other non-controversial Law Commission bills so that measures with widespread agreement can be enacted quickly;
• A Statute Law (Repeals) Bill was introduced to Parliament in February 2008. This would remove a number of pieces of obsolete legislation, dating back several centuries, from the statute book.
• A citizenship, immigration and borders bill which would simplify and consolidate a number of laws dealing with immigration into a single Act, making it simpler for all those dealing with the immigration system;
• An equality bill which would bring together and simplify nine existing major laws, and around 100 others, on all forms of discrimination, making the law more accessible and easier to understand.
Consulting on bills in draft
7. The Government fully endorses the value of pre-legislative scrutiny of draft bills as a means of improving the quality of bills subsequently introduced to Parliament. It is committed to publishing as many bills as possible in draft. Four bills currently going through Parliament have benefited from being published in draft for scrutiny during the 2006-07 parliamentary session: the Climate Change Bill, the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill, the Local Transport Bill and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.
8. A total of nine bills either have been, or are due to be, published in draft during the 2007-08 session:
• Cultural property (armed conflict) bill (published in January 2008) (to become part of a Heritage protection bill)
• Constitutional renewal bill (published in March 2008)
• Marine bill (published in April 2008)
• Heritage protection bill (published in April 2008)
• Marine navigation bill (published in May 2008)
• Apprenticeship reform bill (to become part of an Education and skills bill)
• Immigration bill
• Construction contracts bill (to become part of a community empowerment, housing and economic regeneration bill)
• Communications data bill
9. With one exception, all of these bills have been included in the programme for 2008-09, and are therefore outlined in detail in Chapter Three. The exception is the marine navigation bill which would improve the ability of harbour and lighthouse authorities to discharge their responsibilities for safety management in UK seas and ports, including pilotage, directions to shipping and dealing with wrecks. This bill will be brought forward as soon as parliamentary time allows.
10. Publication in draft is not suitable for every bill. But for many it can be extremely valuable - where the subject matter is of particular interest to Parliament and where Committees can improve texts on the basis of expert evidence. In order to support this approach, draft bills are usually published with an accompanying narrative so that people can understand quickly what the bill does and how it fits alongside any non-legislative measures the Government is pursuing in that area.
11. Publication in draft in one parliamentary session does not guarantee introduction in the next session, as the Government will need to consider its priorities at the time. Publication in draft does however indicate the Government's intention to legislate in a particular area as soon as time allows.
12. The Government is currently considering proposals for bills to be published in draft during the 2008-09 session. The Leader of the House of Commons will set out the Government's proposals for a full list of draft bills in a written ministerial statement at the beginning of the next parliamentary session after the next Queen's Speech. The Government expects this list to develop over coming months, and as a result of this consultation. However four of the bills the Government is currently proposing to publish in draft in the next session are:
• bribery bill - to reform the criminal law of bribery, to provide for a new, modern and consolidated scheme of bribery offences to cover bribery both in this country and by foreign public officials abroad, and to equip prosecutors and courts with the tools they need to tackle bribery of all kinds;
• floods and water bill - to implement the recommendations of the Pitt Review into the 2007 floods and the Government's Water Strategy, Future Water, which launched a review of competition in the water industry and water charging and tariffs;
• civil law reform bill - to implement reforms to the law relating to damages, limitation periods, claims against insurers by people other than the insured person, trusts in relation to the rules against perpetuities and excessive accumulations and the operation of the forfeiture rule in the law of succession;
• single civil and family courts bill - to simplify the civil and family court system by unifying the over-lapping jurisdictions currently exercised by various different courts. This should make it easier to ensure that cases are dealt with by the most appropriate type of judge.
Evaluating Bills after they become law
13. Government and Parliament have a shared interest in strengthening post-legislative scrutiny. Following a Lords Constitution Committee report on Parliament and the Legislative Process in 2004, the Government asked the Law Commission to undertake a study of options for post-legislative scrutiny. The Law Commission reported in October 2006 and the Government published its plans for a new approach to post-legislative scrutiny in March 2008.
14. Under the new approach, three to five years after a law has been passed departments will - for most Acts - publish and submit to the relevant parliamentary select committee a document summarising how the Act has been implemented. This will include a short preliminary assessment of how the Act has worked in practice. The Commons select committee concerned, or other parliamentary bodies, will be able to assess whether a fuller review is necessary at that point. The Government hopes that this process will not only help to identify cases where things need to be put right, but also cases where things have gone well. This new approach should therefore have the effect of improving policy-making in the future.
Working with the devolved administrations
15. It is of crucial importance that the UK Government works together closely with the devolved administrations to ensure the law both respects the devolution settlements but also serves the best interests of all citizens of the United Kingdom. To this end, all government departments work closely with their devolved counterparts when making legislation.
16. The Government has worked with the Welsh Assembly Government and the National Assembly for Wales to devolve further powers to the Assembly. In the current Parliamentary session there are three Bills (the Education and Skills Bill, Local Transport Bill and Planning Bill) containing powers which will enable the National Assembly to pass Assembly Measures in these areas. Also the first Order in Council under the Government of Wales Act 2006 was made in April 2008, giving the Assembly powers on special educational provision for children, young people and adults with additional learning needs.
17. The Government has also been working very closely with the Northern Ireland Assembly since the restoration of devolution in May 2007. The Government will continue to work closely with the Scottish Executive and the Northern Ireland Executive to identify if areas of the UK legislative programme require the consent of the Scottish Parliament or the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Government also continues to take forward a programme of Scotland Act Orders to help facilitate legislation emerging from the Scottish Parliament, where necessary.
The language of legislation
18. The Government is committed wherever possible to using plain language in the legislative process to ensure that non-lawyers can better understand what is being proposed. Explanatory notes are already published alongside bills with the aim of helping the reader to understand what the bill does, how it does it and to provide helpful background. The notes also inform Parliament and others of the main impact on public expenditure or the public sector, on business, the third sector and the environment. and include an equality impact assessment of the proposals.
19. In the current session, the Government is working with Parliament to pilot two measures aimed at providing clearer information to the public and Parliament about its bills.
20. Firstly, for the marine bill, which was published in draft in April 2008, a new format was adopted for the explanatory notes, with the notes printed as part of the same document, on the page facing the clauses they relate to, making them much easier to refer to. The Government is committed to extending this approach, when practicable, to further draft bills, and is also looking at how this approach could be extended to bills going through Parliament.
21. Secondly, with selected bills during their Committee Stage in the House of Commons, the Government is providing a plain language explanation alongside any Government amendments it is tabling to explain what the amendment would do. The purpose of an amendment is sometimes not obvious from the amendment itself, for example if it is simply inserting or removing a few words from a clause. Members have found this helpful.
22. From the current session, all Government bills are now being drafted in gender neutral form. This principally involves avoiding the use of only the male personal pronoun - he, him, his - where a reference to male or female individuals is intended. A corresponding change will be made for secondary legislation from October 2008. |
