Henry Porter: Labour's attack on parliament invokes Henry VIII
[Henry Porter writes commentary for the Observer.]
It's best to highlight this government's attack on liberty rights and privacy with cases where people have been penalised by the government or its agencies when they've done nothing wrong. But occasionally it is worth looking at the legislative process because it is the failure of democratic and protective instincts in parliament that are at the root of the crisis of liberty.
I make no apology for reproducing part of an editorial about the Climate Change Act from the subscriber magazine Criminal Law Week. It's arcane and it's dry, but it explains exactly what's going on.
This act is one of the new breed of acts, vast swathes of which exist only in the hypothetic, to be enacted by secondary legislation behind the scenes, with no or minimal parliamentary scrutiny.
What parliament has effectively done is issue the government with a blank cheque in relation to climate change to make provision as it sees fit be that in respect of the criminalisation of the private citizen for failing to leave his rubbish out at the right time or in the right manner, or the penalisation of companies for giving their customers plastic carrier bags (13 pages of an act of parliament being devoted to this topic!). It is difficult to see how parliament could consider such a lack of transparency acceptable.
If you're looking for an answer to the question – how does Labour make so much law without anyone noticing? – and if you want to know how 3,000 new offences have been created, over a third of which carry prison sentences, then you are half way there. The shocking abuse of secondary legislation, usually referred to by the term "statutory instruments", is one of the scandals of our time.
Statutory instruments – ministerial diktats by any other name – are a way of making sure that little is debated or scrutinised by MPs. With their increasing use, power passes from the chamber of the House of Commons and parliamentary committees to ministers and ultimately to senior civil servants, a naturally undemocratic group who think of the public as an awkward managerial problem.
The provisions, which are inserted in a bill and allow the government to amend or repeal the legislation without debate are known as Henry VIII clauses. With good reason: they were named after Henry VIII's Statute of Proclamation of 1539, which gave him the power to make law by proclamation...
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
It's best to highlight this government's attack on liberty rights and privacy with cases where people have been penalised by the government or its agencies when they've done nothing wrong. But occasionally it is worth looking at the legislative process because it is the failure of democratic and protective instincts in parliament that are at the root of the crisis of liberty.
I make no apology for reproducing part of an editorial about the Climate Change Act from the subscriber magazine Criminal Law Week. It's arcane and it's dry, but it explains exactly what's going on.
This act is one of the new breed of acts, vast swathes of which exist only in the hypothetic, to be enacted by secondary legislation behind the scenes, with no or minimal parliamentary scrutiny.
What parliament has effectively done is issue the government with a blank cheque in relation to climate change to make provision as it sees fit be that in respect of the criminalisation of the private citizen for failing to leave his rubbish out at the right time or in the right manner, or the penalisation of companies for giving their customers plastic carrier bags (13 pages of an act of parliament being devoted to this topic!). It is difficult to see how parliament could consider such a lack of transparency acceptable.
If you're looking for an answer to the question – how does Labour make so much law without anyone noticing? – and if you want to know how 3,000 new offences have been created, over a third of which carry prison sentences, then you are half way there. The shocking abuse of secondary legislation, usually referred to by the term "statutory instruments", is one of the scandals of our time.
Statutory instruments – ministerial diktats by any other name – are a way of making sure that little is debated or scrutinised by MPs. With their increasing use, power passes from the chamber of the House of Commons and parliamentary committees to ministers and ultimately to senior civil servants, a naturally undemocratic group who think of the public as an awkward managerial problem.
The provisions, which are inserted in a bill and allow the government to amend or repeal the legislation without debate are known as Henry VIII clauses. With good reason: they were named after Henry VIII's Statute of Proclamation of 1539, which gave him the power to make law by proclamation...