How I woke up to a nightmare plot to steal centuries of law

[Andy Hunt]

How I woke up to a nightmare plot to steal centuries of law and liberty
Daniel Finkelstein

THE POINT IS, I don't want to seem like a nutter. It's a very common human
emotion, that - not wanting to stand out for thinking something hardly
anyone else thinks. Best keep your head down and say nothing. In 1978, in
Jonestown, Guyana, more than 900 people voluntarily drank
strawberry-coloured poison and died, each one following his neighbour, eager
not to refuse the drink and have his neighbour think that he was a nutter.
Perhaps the worst part of the tragedy is that the rest of us look back at
them and think - what a bunch of nutters.
So I'm nervous about admitting that I've been having a paranoid nightmare,
one that very few other people seem to share. But I have been, so you may as
well know about it.


In my nightmare, Tony Blair finally decides that he is fed-up with putting
Bills before Parliament. He has so much to do and so little time. Don't you
realise how busy he is? He's had enough of close shaves and of having to cut
short trips abroad. He decides to put a Bill to End All Bills before the
Commons, one that gives him and his ministers power to introduce and amend
any legislation in future without going through all those boring stages in
Parliament.
That's not the end of my feverish fantasy. The new law is proposed and
hardly anyone notices. John Redwood complains, of course, and a couple of
Liberal Democrats, but by and large it is ignored. The Labour rebels are
nowhere to be seen. The business lobby announces that it is about time all
those politicians streamlined things, cutting out time-wasting debates. In a
half empty Commons chamber, a junior minister puts down any objections with
a few partisan wisecracks. Then the Bill to End All Bills is nodded through
the Houses of Parliament, taking with it a few hundred years of
Parliamentary democracy.
I wake up, sweating.
Only one thing persuades me that I'm not cracking up. When I have my
nightmares about the Bill to End All Bills, I am not dreaming about
dastardly legislation that I fear a cartoon Tony Blair, with an evil cackle,
will introduce in some terrible future. I am tossing and turning about a
government Bill that was given its second reading in the House of Commons
last week and is heading into committee.
Now I know what I am about to tell you is difficult to believe (Why isn't
this on the front pages? Where's the big political row?) but I promise you
that it is true. The extraordinary Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill,
currently before the House, gives ministers power to amend, repeal or
replace any legislation simply by making an order and without having to
bring a Bill before Parliament. The House of Lords Constitution Committee
says the Bill is "of first-class constitutional significance" and fears that
it could "markedly alter the respective and long standing roles of minister
and Parliament in the legislative process".
There are a few restrictions - orders can't be used to introduce new taxes,
for instance - but most of the limitations on their use are fuzzy and
subjective. One of the "safeguards" in the Bill is that an order can impose
a burden only "proportionate to the benefit expected to be gained". And who
gets to judge whether it is proportionate? Why, the minister of course. The
early signs are not good. Having undertaken initially not to use orders for
controversial laws, the Government has already started talking about
abstaining from their use when the matter at hand is "highly" controversial.
Now, I am not an extreme libertarian. I don't spend my weekends in
conferences discussing the abolition of traffic lights and the privatisation
of MI5. But I have to admit that the legislation being debated in the
Commons this week - the new ID cards, the smoking ban, the measure on the
glorification of terror - has tempted me to take up smoking and start
attending lectures about Hayek organised by earnest men with pamphlets in
carrier bags.
Yet the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill has made me realise that I
may be missing the point - the biggest danger to civil liberties posed by
these new laws is not the nature of them, but merely their quantity.
Let me explain my thinking.
The Government claims that it has no malign intention in introducing the
reform to parliamentary procedures. It is just that it has such ambitious
plans for deregulation - or "better regulation" as it rather suspiciously
calls it - that Parliament won't be able to cope. The previous Regulatory
Reform Act, passed in 2001, was so hedged around with conditions and
safeguards that it took longer to produce a regulatory reform order than it
did to produce a Bill. So this time, the Government wants more sweeping
powers.
During future detailed Commons consideration of the Bill, restrictions on
the terms of the new orders will be resisted using the argument that
business wants deregulation and government has to get on with it.
What does this argument, used often by the minister during last week's
debate, amount to? An admission that we are now passing so many new laws, so
quickly, and so many of them are sloppy, that we don't have time to debate
them properly or reform them when they go wrong. Parliament is drowning in a
sea of legislation. Instead of calling a halt to this, the Government is
seeking a way of moving ever faster, adding yet more laws, this time with
even less debate.
The problem with ID cards, smoking bans and new terror laws is not just the
standard liberal one. It isn't even that they are entirely unecessary, since
you can fashion an argument for each measure. It is that we should be
reforming and enforcing the laws we have, rather than adding new
complicated, poorly thought through laws to the stack that already exists.
The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill isn't just a dangerous proposal.
It is a flashing red light.
Our legislative activism is endangering our parliamentary democracy and we
must stop before it's too late.
Or am I a nutter?

[Billhook]

Andy -

thanks for posting this.

I share the concern as to why this is not a lead story across the (ex-) broadsheet media.

While I can see an authoritarian wing of the Tory party (that mirrors the same in "New" Labour) quietly relishing its use when they return to power, it seems pathetic that the Lib Dems haven't promoted the issue publicly.

More dratted letters to write . . .

regards,

Bill

PS: Apologies; edited for language. - B.

[MacG]

Sounds like another symptom of a society in severe decline.

[RogerCO]

Good grief

Well that is the end of our parliamentary democracy then (for what little it was worth - but at least it gave some sembalance of public debate and accountability)

If anyone doubts what Andy says then go to
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/p ... .html#j001
and read it from the horse's mouth:

1.Purpose
(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 Law Commissions, with or without changes.
...

[Billhook]

It seems to need saying that

THEY HAVEN'T GOT IT THOUGH YET !

The question is how fast will how many people see that this is the legalization of dictatorship, and what will we do about it ?

HMQ must be hopping, for a start.

She signed many of the bills they seek to gut.

And if anyone doesn't see why she's relevant, I'll gladly supply chapter and verse.

regards,

Bill

[Blue Peter]

And if anyone doesn't see why she's relevant, I'll gladly supply chapter and verse.

regards,

Bill

Please do,


Peter.

[MacG]

Some expanded reflexions:

I have a creeping suspicion that our systems are degenerating in an accellerating pace. Here in Sweden we have had national ID's for the last 30 years and people have been monitored and registered since the 1700's (which has been a boon for geneaologists). We do however get increasing signals that the monitoring system is not really maintained. The information is there, but there is nobody there with motivation to actually use it for something. We got reports a couple of weeks ago that the majority of monitoring cameras had been shut down since nobody had the time to watch them.

I associate to the decline of the Soviet empire. It just fell apart, first gradually, then suddenly. Draconic laws have little meaning if the apparatus to enforce and exploit them lose motivation and ideology.

The people who currently run the system dont have the ability to think "outside the box", and when reality dont conform to their maps, they just get disoriented and passive.

It might be that our western societies are trying to reverse to their opposites as a final grasp for survival, just like the Soviet Union tried to reverse to it's opposite in it's final years.

[snow hope]

This is frightening stuff. Well done for spotting it Andy.

I have emailed a Liberal Democrat MP highlighting the bill and asking for his assistance re defeating it.

If I hear anything I shall let you know.

[RogerCO]

Greens have woken up:
http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2422
Everyone should write to their local MP on this one
http://www.writetothem.com/ makes it easy.
Just ask them if they are aware of it and what they think about it.

[Andy Hunt]

I was actually alerted to this by a friend who works for Imperial Tobacco, who are still smarting from the forthcoming smoking ban. After that particular piece of legislation, I think they have got it in for this Government!