Andy Hall wrote:

In the extreme case, if every new measure had to be debated in
Parliament in detail, the legislative programme would never be
completed in the time available.

Of course if they didn't waste time on things that have no business
having the amount of time spent on them such as fox hunting, and
didn't seek to introduce so much new regulation in the first place it
would help.

Therefore they have enabling legislation which allows a certain level
of addition and change to go through with little or no parliamentary
time.

They seem very fond of the so called "statutory instrument" these days.
IIUC it was intended to be used only in a select few cases where there
was a need to constantly revise legislation (or parts of it) - the
finance act being a good example since it allowed the budget to become
law automatically each year without need of extra parliamentary time. I
suppose you could argue that building regs fall into this category.
However these days it seems to be used all over the shop as a way to
reduce the scrutiny of new law, or to enable the use of very poorly
drafted legislation on the understanding that the courts can sort out
the mess later at jo public's time and expense.

It is almost they are trying to create work for lawyers... oh hang on a mo

So the reality is that this stuff goes through under pressure of
commercial and interest group lobbying and a bloated civil service.

Democracy doesn't enter into it.

The effect is that we move inexorably towards the modus operandi of
the latin language countries where there is plenty of legislation, but
which is mainly ignored unless something bad happens.

and then it is only used to apportion blame....

That's fine as long as we all understand that that's the rules of the
game - sort of like traffic lights in Milan being an indication of
policy more than anything else.

;-)




--
Cheers,

John.

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