7th March 2022
Imagine a serious piece of proposed legislation, for serious times.
Imagine that legislation is substantial – a Bill of 64 pages.
Imagine that legislation is complex – 55 clauses and 5 schedules (the latter comprising 11 parts).
Imagine that legislation is coercive – creating at least 12 new criminal offences.
Imagine that legislation confers wide executive powers – with 20 “may by regulations” provisions for Secretary of State to legislate by fiat, including in respect of individual rights.
And now…
…imagine that proposed legislation being forced through all its stages in the House of Commons in a single day.
What could possibly go wrong?
Well.
We will now find out, for this is what is happening today with the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill.
This significant legislation is being rushed through with almost no opportunity for adequate scrutiny by Members of Parliament – just so the government can be seen be doing something about Oligarchs.
This is not how fundamental legislation should be put in place.
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Obviously this should have been drafted and debated years ago, but at least it’s underway. I agree entirely it’s bad to do it hastily, even a few days would be better, but maybe if it had a temporary nature, with revision in 1-3 months’ time, that would serve the purpose now.
Sadly, it’s not even as if it’s likely that the clauses have been mulled over at length in Government before being made public – given that drafting authority is usually only given when there’s an agreed plan for introducing a Bill into the Parliamentary session.
As ever with this administration, it is all about the optics and how it will play in the Mail and Telegraph. Johnson and his merry men and women want to be seen to rush through legislation, but the last thing they want to do is act on it. The oligarchs will have months to move or sell their assets. In one bound Abramovich has sprung free. The Tories are so close to the oligarchs that you couldn’t get a fag paper between them. It’s the same story with the Ukrainian refugees, only this time it uses the “law” and bureaucracy to drag its feet, smirkily overseen by the heartless and wantonly cruel Patel: the EU one million seven hundred thousand, even little Ireland at the farthest western extreme has welcomed a few thousand, the UK 50. World beating indeed. Every day, this government brings shame to us.
Well if it’s anything like the BREXIT bill, they’ll rush it through and then decide it doesn’t meet their requirements so it will all unravel anyway.
Feels like the UK has under-reacted to this risk for a long time – and is now over-reacting. Neither of these options is ideal….
This is so typical of them they let things fester for years, persist with the dishonest & indefensible, prevaricate, deny, lie, get exposed, panic, improvise and impose. Recipe from The Bad Government Cookbook.
> with 20 “may by regulations” provisions for Secretary of State to legislate by fiat
Which if recent Tory donor practice is followed can also function as “may not” options. “Collection plate is looking a little empty this week” notes Matriarch Priti meaningfully as the flock of high-value individuals files down the aisle of the Westminster Chapel of Discount Indulgences (1922 Unreformed Congregation)
I have a question, with rushed legislation like this, we often think about how little opportunity there is for MPs etc. to scrutinise it, but can you give any insights into how such a bill of 64 pages is written? Are there “wish lists” of clauses kept on file for years, waiting for an opportunity, that can be pasted together to make the bill? Or does a team of civil servants get an instruction from the minister to make a bill for, say, 3 days time, and work all night writing it like a student having an essay crisis?
This has all the feel of the time the David Blunkett and the government of the time brought in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act to target Brian Haw the peace campaigner yet somehow managed to affect everyone else but him…
Damned if they do, damned if they don’t at the moment. The average man on the Beckenham Borisbus has little understanding of, and even less time for, legal niceties. The headlines and social media threads are all about how the government is lagging behind the EU in sanctioning the oligarchs, and our relative tardiness is being held up as evidence of how the government remains firmly in their pockets.
Rushing through legislation to enable a more rapid response may be fraught with difficulties. But it will be immensely popular with the general public and will defuse one of the more potent criticisms of the government. It is, as always, all about the optics.
This in itself demonstrates a serious lack of accountability and transparency. Of course, the draft legislation should have been worked through in detail years ago. The government has had to be dragged kicking and screaming now that the circumstances dictate that urgent action is required. It should have to fully account to Parliament for why it has taken so long that this grossly unsatisfactory parliamentary procedure has had to be adopted.
Even if the legislation is horribly flawed, what is the chance that it will affect people as horrendously as the process that enabled hundreds of Postmasters to be stripped of their possessions and denied their liberty?
Just like “levelling up”; the “Northern Powerhouse”; etc, the government has been inpower since 2010 and had all the time in the world to address such issues (and the thorny subject of tax havens and closing tax loopholes) but did nothing except posture. Equally, they had time enough not to make the worst fist possible of Brexit, but failed.
Brezit and the oligarchs were almost certainly gambits of Putin’s regime to neuter theUK as a major force (OK, amiddling force) and weaken the EU – he has been planning the attacks in Ukraine for a long time.
The system is broken, the executive is incompetent, the electorate is asleep.
People are dying and the government can’t organise the most basic of assistance.
Meanwhile across Europe, nations are organising and acting.
There are no words.
I remember being told that a law designed to solve one specific problem usually caused twice as many problems in the long run.
I suspect this legislation will prove that theory to be correct.
Legislators tend to forget that the law (and its implementation) is a bit like a Rubik cube: move one element and everything else changes.
I’ve had a quick look at Hansard (I know how to have fun) and it looks as if the debate strayed into other Ukraine-related issues, so we may have reservations about how well scrutinised this bill has been.
But… the Government will be seen to have ‘one something’ and that, my friends, is all that matters.
Obviously, that was supposed to say ‘done something ‘. Whoops!
Yet another tragic and embarrassing display of inadequacy.
In associated reading today, I found that Russia was the world’s largest importer of wallpaper in 2019. Wonder if they like Lulu Lytle?
https://oec.world/en/profile/country/rus
Not in their nature to consult. They, and they alone know what is best for us. No one else can be trusted. Perhaps the so-called govt is afeared of being shown up.
Is this the s-cg we deserve? If so, the British People have fallen low indeed. The next élection result will tell.
We must hope that the Lords’ marking of the government’s homework will be less slapdash.
The use of the word “rushing” worries and annoys in equal measure.
It reminds me of the Sue Gray report because it is three months to the day now that it was commissioned and we are still waiting.
In her update of 31 January Gray said “the investigative work is now essentially complete.”.(para 12)
The Police were by then involved and the Chief Constable had not yet resigned. In para 14 Gray explained
“Unfortunately”………….I am extremely limited in what I can say…….. and it is not possible at present to provide a meaningful report setting out and analysing the extensive factual info I have been able to gather.”
Yet certain people in Downing Street can move when it suits them
What seems to be required here is , as they say in the legal trade, some sort of “judicial bollocking” if only to stop this becoming a second Darroch which “unfortunately” seems to be the way this is heading.
David. As you know, Ombudsman reform is a ‘hobby horse’ of mine but a glaring example of Parliament’s lack of scrutiny, the subject of your blog and the excellent comments of your readers, is the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (Powers) Bill. This is a private members Bill “To grant powers to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman to identify and investigate systemic problems in the benefits system and make associated recommendations to the Secretary of State: and for connected purposes”
So how is this bill getting on? It has already had second reading which, according to the House of Commons website, is “the first opportunity for MP’s to debate the main principles of the Bill”
So what are the main principles of the Bill? The website goes on to say “There are no publications for this Bill yet. This can often happen in an early stage of a bill, when it has not been fully drafted”
The Bill is programmed for the House of Commons on 18th March. I am no constitutional expert on the passage of legislation, but I fail to see how MP’s, at Second Reading, can have already debated the main principles of a Bill which has not even been drafted.
The dangers are real.
Giving ministers powers in ’emergency’ legislation has never been a happy story. Laws passed for one reason (anti-terrorism, for example) have been misused for other purposes.
But I wonder if the problem is less to do with the rush and more to do with structural defects in the Westminster system.
What I mean is that even laws passed with what Westminster considers as due deliberation are not in fact properly scrutinised in Parliament. Nor is the process of preparing legal texts a transparent one.
For this reason, the dangers of poor legislation are greater than the instances of rushed legislation.
In other countries, law-making is much more public – all the preparatory texts for legislation are public, as are all comments from within and between government departments and all interested parties; it is clear on what topics ministers made political choices; lobbying is publicly recorded.
And the political process of scrutiny is therefore more informed and effective – members of parliament develop expert knowledge and the details are properly discussed; committees have real power to examine legislation independently of the government.
In Westminster, voices are silenced by ‘whipping’ and marshalled into a ‘for us or against us’ game. In other countries, there may be the same party pressures, but there are more parties and therefore more voices. Parliament is independent of the executive and less subject to manipulation.
Even in our confrontational political system, there are ways to improve transparency and the effectiveness of law-making. In time, they might also lead to a change in political culture.
I almost don’t dare to read it: Is that bully Patel getting a bunch of legal nukes to attack us with?
How far are this government away from achieving the legal power to dictate?