Category: Constitutional Law

What the Home Secretary’s Ministerial Direction on Rwanda signifies – and what it does not signify

18th April 2022

The home secretary has issued ‘a ministerial direction’ for her proposal for a ‘migration and economic development partnership’ with Rwanda for the processing of asylum claims.

Such a direction is significant – but it is also important to realise what it does not signify.

The direction by itself does not mean that the proposal is wrong, or will not work, or is unlawful.

What it does mean is that there is sufficient concern within the home office that the most senior official wants Priti Patel to own the decision to go ahead with it.

And this is worth exploring.

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The partnership proposal was published last (Maundy) Thursday – which is odd, given that parliament was not sitting and we are around the time of the start of the central government ‘purdah’ for the local election campaigns.

Also published was a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Rwanda.

In general terms, an MoU is a document that is supposed to impress you as as being effective and formal, but is not actually effective nor formal.

A political (and legal) sleight of hand (SoH).

And followers of this blog will enjoy the wording of paragraph 2.2 of the MoU:

“2.2 For the avoidance of doubt, the commitments set out in this Memorandum are made by the United Kingdom to Rwanda and vice versa and do not create or confer any right on any individual, nor shall compliance with this Arrangement be justiciable in any court of law by third-parties or individuals.”

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So that was (Maundy) Thursday.

On (Easter) Saturday, in the late afternoon, two letters were published by the government.

These letters were dated 13 April 2022, that is the Wednesday before the proposal and the MoU were published on the Thursday.

The first letter was from the most senior civil servant at the home office.

He was insisting on a ministerial direction.

Why?

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To answer that question we need to understand government policy on ‘managing public money’.

This policy is not the sort of partisan policy which politicians announce or publish in a manifesto.

It is instead the sort of policy which any government has, regardless of which part is in power.

And within each department the most senior official – in this case the permanent secretary – is the ‘accounting officer’ responsible for ensuring the policy is complied with.

When I was a government lawyer fifteen years ago, it was known as ‘VFM’ – value for money.

Part of the ‘managing public money’ policy provides:

The fine folk at the Institute of Government have provided this excellent explainer on ministerial directions which you should now read.

And this is the government’s own page for such directions.

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Now we go back to the permanent secretary’s letter.

You will see the first three paragraphs set out his understanding of the policy and what it is seeking to achieve – and this is set out in positive terms to which the home secretary herself cannot object.

The fourth paragraph then sets out his role as the accounting officer, and the fifth paragraph sets out the extent to which he sees there is no problem with the Rwanda proposal (emphasis added):

“The Accounting Officer advice that I have received comprises a rigorous assessment of the regularity, propriety, feasibility and value for money of this policy, drawing on legal, policy and operational expertise.  I have satisfied myself that it is regular, proper and feasible for this policy to proceed. We have incorporated learning from Windrush in developing this policy and the plans for its implementation.”

So, according to the official it is generally “regular, proper and feasible” for the proposal to proceed.

But.

There is something about which he as accounting officer is not satisfied, and this is set out out in the next paragraphs (which I have separated out for flow):

“However, this advice highlights the uncertainty surrounding the value for money of the proposal.

“I recognise that, despite the high cost of this policy, there are potentially significant savings to be realised from deterring people entering the UK illegally.

“Value for money of the policy is dependent on it being effective as a deterrent.

“Evidence of a deterrent effect is highly uncertain and cannot be quantified with sufficient certainty to provide me with the necessary level of assurance over value for money.

I do not believe sufficient evidence can be obtained to demonstrate that the policy will have a deterrent effect significant enough to make the policy value for money.

“This does not mean that the MEDP cannot have the appropriate deterrent effect; just that it there is not sufficient evidence for me to conclude that it will.”

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The proposal has a “high cost” – but there is no sufficient evidence that the high cost will be offset by savings from it having any deterrent effect.

The evidence for such an effect is not only uncertain but “highly uncertain”.

He therefore cannot sign off on the policy as accounting officer.

He instead needs to escalate it to the minister to sign off personally.

And so (again broken up for flow):

“Therefore, I will require your written instruction to proceed.

“I consider it is entirely appropriate for you to make a judgement to proceed in the light of the illegal migration challenge the country is facing.

“I will of course follow this direction and ensure the Department continues to support the implementation of the policy to the very best of our abilities.

“Should you issue a direction, I am required to copy all relevant papers to the Comptroller and Auditor General (who will inform the Public Accounts Committee) and the Treasury Officer of Accounts.

“I anticipate publishing our exchange of direction letters as early as practicable.”

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So this is not any usurpation of ministerial responsibility and democratic control, but a reinforcement of the priority of minister over officials.

The minister will get their way – but they have to take the decision themselves.

And so the home secretary replied, giving the direction.

Her letter is also worth looking at – though this time for what it does not say.

Her letter does not engage with the value for money points but sidesteps them (again broken for flow):

“While we understand it is not possible for HMG to accurately model the deterrent effect from day one, together with Rwanda, we are confident this policy is our best chance at producing that effect.

“It is only by introducing new incentives and effective deterrents into the system, as our international partners like Denmark, Greece, and Australia have succeeded in doing, that we can take on the criminal gangs facilitating illegal entry and break their lethal business model.

“I recognise your assessment on the immediate value for money aspect of this proposal.

“However, I note that without action, costs will continue to rise, lives will continue to be lost, and that together we have introduced safeguards into our agreement to protect taxpayer funding.

“And while accepting the constraints of the accounting officer framework set out by HM Treasury, I also think there are credible invest-to-save arguments in the long term.

[…]

…I also believe there is an imperative to act now to mitigate the impact on staff wellbeing as well as departmental operational and financial pressures in the longer term.

“It would therefore be imprudent in my view, as Home Secretary, to allow the absence of quantifiable and dynamic modelling – which is inevitable when developing a response to global crises influenced by so many geopolitical factors such as climate change, war and conflict –– to delay delivery of a policy that we believe will reduce illegal migration, save lives, and ultimately break the business model of the smuggling gangs.

“I am therefore formally directing you as Accounting Officer to take forward this scheme with immediate effect, managing the identified risks as best you can.”

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For the home secretary, the lack of sufficient evidence of any deterrent effect does not matter.

She believes the Rwanda proposal will work, and so it shall be taken forward.

She is confident that in the longer-term there will be value for money, and – in any case – modelling is not easy for this sort of things.

Her decision; her call.

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Of course, one should be wary of taking documents such as these two exchanged letters seriously at face value.

Such exchanges can be choreographed and it sometimes (though not here one suspects, given the disjoined nature of the reply) the same official will draft both letters – ‘sign here minister’.

It could be that the request for a direction here is a manifestation of deeper unease within the home office at this proposal – and that such a request, framed in VFM terms, was the only way of signalling publicly this unease.

The bureaucratic equivalent of the blinking hostage.

On the other hand, the home office is certainly capable of nasty and expensive policies.

And the permanent secretary in his fifth paragraph goes out of his way to say it is “regular, proper and feasible for this policy to proceed”.

Who knows?

Perhaps the permanent secretary knew the value for money objection could not be gainsaid and that it would not look like he was criticising the merits of the proposal.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

We do not know the realities behind the scenes.

The request for a direction is significant – but what it signifies generally is not clear.

But what we do know from this exchange of letters is that on the very eve of the publication of the proposal, the most senior official in the home office said that there was not sufficient evidence that the proposal would have any deterrent effect, and in response to this the home secretary could not provide any such evidence but wanted to go ahead with the policy anyway.

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A close look at the resignation letter of David Wolfson QC as Justice Minister

13th April 2022

The justice minister David Wolfson QC has published a letter:

He is (at least) the third senior legal figure to resign from this government in respect of the Rule of Law.

The Treasury Solicitor and the Advocate General for Scotland resigned when the government sought to introduce legislation to enable it to break the law.

And now a justice minister has resigned because cabinet ministers themselves have broken the criminal law (which is the necessary implication of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to not to contest the fixed penalty notices) and seem not to care.

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Wolfson has a very good reputation within the legal profession – and is highly regarded even by those who disagree starkly with his political allegiance.

It is – on any basis – a significant resignation.

But the letter is worth looking at carefully – especially the second paragraph:

These five sentences are perfectly composed and structured.

The first sentence is the general finding of fact: there was not only repeated rule-breaking but also (as rules can sometimes just be for policy or guidance) breaches of the criminal law.

This general finding is incontrovertible – the paid penalties are conclusive proof.

The second sentence then sets out a further finding of fact: the breaches were not merely trivial but were of such a “scale, context and nature” that such conduct cannot pass “with constitutional impunity”.

So not just breaches, but significant breaches.

The second sentence then sets out the factors which go to this significance – that others complied at personal cost, and were prosecuted and even criminalised for lesser breaches.

And, as with the first sentence, what is stated is incontrovertible.

Having established these two conclusions, the third and fourth sentences then distinguish between what happened but also the official response: the implication here is that a more measured official response could have perhaps cured the problem.

But the official response was not measured.

Then having set out the facts, and stated that the official response was deficient, the fifth sentence (somewhat inevitably) then follows – including a deft last stab that the prime minister does not see the problem in the same way.

And the paragraph then ends with the firm stamp of the word “resignation”.

No tiresome “I am resigning because” waffle here – the paragraph ends where other paragraphs would have began.

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Compare this response with that of another government minister – the Lord Chancellor, who has a recognised constitutional role to defend the Rule of Law:

What in Wolfson’s first and second sentences can this custodian of the Rule of Law disagree with?

Indeed, Dominic Raab’s tweet is no doubt a very instance of the “official response” which Wolfson describes in his fourth and fifth sentences.

Wolfson’s letter and Raab’s tweet are a study in contrast: how to take something constitutionally seriously and how not to do so.

Any minister who professes to care about the Rule of Law – including those who are lawyers – must ask themselves: which part of Wolfson’s letter is wrong?

And if they cannot fault its reasoning or its conclusions they should also do what Wolfson did: resign.

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Boris Johnson’s Triple-Whammy of Unlawfulness

12th April 2022

Constitutional law is not supposed to be interesting.

Constitutional law is supposed to be boring.

And Boris Johnson could not make it any more exciting.

To take three examples.

First, the Supreme Court held that he gave unlawful advice to the Queen over prorogation of parliament.

(An incident that managed to engage all four of the monarch, parliament, the courts and the executive – the constitutional law equivalent of a full house.)

Second, his government actually introduced legislation to Parliament to enable it to break the law.

(Just typing that seems strange – but it happened, although the government averred that the law would be broken in a “limited and specific” way.)

And now, an even more extraordinary thing has happened.

The prime minister has been found by the metropolitan police to have broken this governments own laws on gatherings under lockdown.

And the necessary implication of this sanction is that the prime minister knowingly misled parliament when denying such a gathering took place.

He cannot even say he was misinformed, as he was at the gathering himself.

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Johnson has not been prime minister a long time, and there are many prime ministers who have been in office far longer with far less constitutional excitement.

Of course he should resign – but that is not the point of this blogpost.

The point instead is to convey the sheer magnitude of what Johnson has ‘accomplished’ in his trashing of constitutional norms – and in under three years..

Just one of the above examples – and there have been many more, it is just those three came readily to mind – would be career-ending for a politician in any normal political system.

And that even now nobody knows if he will resign is an indication of how abnormal politics are at the moment.

It takes a certain quality for a prime minister in three years to contrive this triple-whammy of unlawfulness.

Indeed, it is difficult to conceive what he could still yet do as a fourth instalment.

Brace, brace.

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A cabinet free to all – a side note on the “Non Dom” issue in UK politics

11th April 2022

How could it be allowed, I was asked, for someone with a Green Card and who was married to a Non Dom to be a member of the cabinet?

The answer I gave was that – in principle – anyone can sit in the cabinet and be a minister.

This is one of the examples of the flexibility of the constitution of the United Kingdom and its reliance on conventions.

There are some relevant limits – there is a limit on how many paid ministers there can be.

But this does not limit unpaid ministers – or which ministers are invited to attend cabinet.

And there are limits on how many ministers can be paid at each grade:

There is no requirement as to place of birth or nationality.

The former prime minister Andrew Bonar Law was from New Brunswick, which was in Canada by the time he was prime minister.

A more recent prime minister was born in the United States.

(Yes, him.)

And we have had at least two other prime ministers – including the Duke of Wellington – who were born outside the United Kingdom by reason of being born in Ireland before the Act of Union.

There is also no requirement as to usual residence.

In the second world war we had ministers such as Macmillan resident abroad.

And the South African politician Jan Smuts and other Empire ministers were members of a so-called imperial war cabinet in London in the first world war.

Nobody gave any of this a second thought.

Strictly speaking, you do not even have to be a member of parliament (or a lord) to be a minister.

Indeed, technically, ministers are not members of a parliament between the dissolution of an old one and the start of a new one.

(And so the ‘well actually’ answer to the quiz question as who was the last prime minister not to sit in the house of commons is neither Douglas Home nor Salisbury but Johnson in 2019.)

Under Thatcher, the then Solicitor-General for Scotland Peter Fraser once carried on in his office after losing his parliamentary seat in 1987 for two years before becoming a peer, as there were no other Scottish Tory MPs to take the job.

Of course, there is a practical problem of accountability – a minister cannot stand at the front bench unless he or she is a member of either house of parliament.

But in both the commons and the lords it is not unusual to have one minister answering on behalf of another – so not even this practical problem is insurmountable.

By convention cabinet ministers also are or are appointed as privy councillors – but this is not a limitation, as many non-ministers are appointed to be ‘Right Honourable‘.

The ‘Right Honourable” title is sometimes even given to politicians as a consolation prize for not joining the cabinet.

So, in answer to the query mentioned at the start of the post: there is nothing formal stopping anyone being appointed a minister, even to the cabinet.

Even someone who were a Non Dom themselves.

Perhaps there should be formal restrictions: but as it happens, there are not.

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Partygate returns – and a reminder about how this still matters in constitutional terms

29th March 2022

The ‘Partygate’ problem has come back for both the Prime Minister and those who work(ed) with him in Downing Street.

Perhaps he – and his political and media supporters – had hoped the fog of war in Ukraine would obscure this ongoing political crisis from view.

But: no.

It is here again – and in this latest stage there are fixed penalty notices for a number of Downing Street staff.

These – in effect – fines appear to be just the first round, and it may be that further penalties are issued.

There may even be one issued to the Prime Minister.

Currently Downing Street is maintaining that no rules were broken – even though these fixed penalty notices mean that the Metropolitan Police have reasonably concluded after investigation that offences have been committed.

Perhaps Johnson and his staffers want ‘their day in court’ before they accept any rules were broken.

This is all engrossing political drama – even political soap opera.

So it is important to not overlook why any of this really matters.

It matters for two reasons.

First, it is about legality.

Those in government are not above the law – and certainly not above the coercive restrictions that almost-casually imposed upon the rest of us during lock-down.

(By ‘casually’ I mean that the rules were imposed often without proper parliamentary debate or scrutiny and were often published at the last moment before taking effect.)

Second, it is about accountability.

The Prime Minister expressly told the House of Commons that rules were not broken and that he was unaware of the pandemic of partying in Downing Street.

On the face of it, it looks as if the Prime Minister was lying.

Of course, in the real world, politicians lie all the time.

But, taking such a cynical view at its highest, there should still be some adverse consequence to a Prime Minister misleading the democratic house of parliament.

‘Partygate’ is only incidentally about parties – the triviality of the circumstances co-exist with serious issues of legality and accountability.

And that is why it has not been obscured by the fog of war.

The problem of legality and accountability is still there, and it needs to be addressed.

And until and unless the problem is addressed, the problem will continue to de-stabilise British politics – because it is not really about partying at all.

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Good-bye to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 – which ‘enshrined’ fixed parliamentary terms in law, ho ho

24th March 2022

So farewell then, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011.

You will be remembered, if at all, for two things.

First, that nobody could ever remember exactly the arrangement of lower-case letters, or the hyphen, or whether ‘term’ was plural, or whether ‘Parliaments’ was singular, in your title – at least without checking.

Second, that you were a singularly useless piece of legislation.

You were to ‘enshrine’ fixed-term parliaments ‘in law’.

Ho ho.

But you were circumvented in 2016, when it suited politicians.

And you were circumvented in 2019, when it suited politicians.

And you were going to be circumvented again and again whenever it suited politicians.

Yes, there may have been an indirect effect in that any circumvention of the Act was not that simple.

But circumventions were not that difficult either.

In the end, you turned out to be more of an ornament than an instrument.

And today you were repealed.

You have now gone the same way of so many other things that were once ‘enshrined in law’.

Ho ho.

Another exercise in fundamental constitutional reform that was not thought-through.

And now we are back – legally literally – to the legal and constitutional position we would have been in had you never been passed.

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A balancing exercise in action – Chris Mullin defeats a disclosure request in respect of the Birmingham pub bombings

23rd March 2022

I was born and brought up in the Birmingham of the 1970s, and like many others I had family and family friends who could well have been killed in the Birmingham pub bombings.

There is a powerful public interest in that crime being properly investigated and those guilty being convicted.

Six innocent men were convicted for the bombings, and their prosecution and punishments was an appalling miscarriage of justice, perhaps one of the worst miscarriages of justice in English legal history.

There was a powerful public interest in that miscarriage of justice being exposed and corrected.

And the journalist (and later politician) Chris Mullin was the one who did most to expose and correct that miscarriage of justice.

What happens when two powerful public interests such as the above collide?

That was the issue before the recorder of London at the Old Bailey.

On one hand, those police officers investigating the bombings want access to materials held by Mullin.

You can see why the police would want this – especially if it would contain direct evidence that would aid a successful prosecution.

But that does not necessarily mean the police should get it.

The reason is that the material which Mullin holds was given to him on the basis of confidentiality, so that he could expose the miscarriage of justice.

Without that assurance to his source, Mullin would not have been given that information, and without that information the miscarriage of justice would not have been exposed.

And so the public interest in exposing that miscarriage of justice would have been defeated.

In a detailed and fascinating judgment, the judge shows how the competing – indeed contrasting – public interests in this case should be balanced.

And in a compelling conclusion the judge holds that in this case there should not be an order for disclosure of the material.

It is unfortunate that this means that any prosecution of those guilty of the bombings will not be assisted by this material – but such a prosecution should not be at the cost of undermining the public interest in exposing a miscarriage of justice.

Not only is the judgment compelling, it also is another recent example of a judge taking Article 10 of the ECHR and the right to free expression seriously.

It is a good judgment in a difficult case, and it is recommended reading for anyone interested in practical law and policy.

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The Northern Irish protocol is both legal and constitutional – the significance of today’s appeal decision

14th March 2022

One of the features of having an ‘unwritten’ (that is, uncodified) constitution is that there is not often ‘constitutional’ litigation.

Even cases of the highest political significance are decided on technical points of law, with judges affecting to not be concerned about any wider implications.

But sometimes there is a case where the court is conscious of the constitutional significance of the matter before it, and today one such case was decided at the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland.

We do not yet have the full judgment, though we have this detailed summary.

The case was about the legality of the Northern Irish Protocol.

At first instance the appellants – a group of pro-Union politicians – lost their challenge to the protocol’s legality, and so they appealed.

One ground was that the protocol was contrary to the Act of Union 1800.

Here part of the court’s summary reads as follows:

“The court said that Parliament was clearly sighted on the Protocol which was the end result of a “protracted, transparent, debated, informed and fully democratic process which decided arrangements for Northern Ireland post Brexit”.

“It said the terms were settled and made law after a long parliamentary process and it could not be suggested that Parliament was unaware of the changes that may be wrought.”

This is important.

Of course, there is a certain artificiality in saying MPs knew what they were voting for in detail – or even cared.

But – almost as a legal, or constitutional, fiction – parliament must have been aware of what it was doing.

And as such it would be wrong for a court to gainsay parliament.

In particular parliament had expressly legislated that previous legislation – including, by implication, the Act of Union – should be read so that they would be subject to the withdrawal agreement legislation.

And if they were subject to the withdrawal agreement legislation there was no conflict – parliament had already stated which provision would have the the priority.

The significance of this judgment is that the protocol is not only legal but also constitutional – which is not always quite the same thing.

The court has set out how the protocol fits within – and does not disrupt – the settled constitutional arrangements of the United Kingdom.

And it has done so not in a judgment cloaked by technicalities and affectations, but with an open acceptance that parliament should prevail.

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How you can be sued for libel for reporting things said in Parliament

10th March 2022

On 9 March 2022 the following was stated by Bob Seely MP in the House of Commons:

What Seely said is set out on the ‘They Work For You’ website:

And it has been published in Hansard:

What has struck many about what Seely said is that reporting parliamentary debates could be actionable under the law of defamation.

Surely, some thought, reporting what is said in parliament has absolute privilege – that is legal protection – from any law suit.

Well.

The legal position is not straightforward – though you may think it should be.

And the unsettling answer is that you can be sued for reporting things said in parliament.

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First there needs to be a distinction.

What MPs and peers themselves say in parliament does have absolute privilege.

This protection is provided by the Bill of Rights:

“`That the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament.”

From time to time, (ahem) spirited lawyers do threaten parliamentarians in respect of things said in parliament (here is a 2010 example) – but the lawyers should not do so, `and any legal claim would fail.

(The position is less clear-cut for witnesses at select committee hearings – but that is a topic for another time.)

This means there is nothing that a law firm can do with a legal threat to Seely or any other parliamentarian about what they say in parliamentary proceedings.

The MP or peer has absolute privilege – though there are rules in both houses of parliament about what can and cannot be said about certain matters – and those rules are not justiciable in court.

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But.

Those reporting – or indeed repeating – what is said in parliament do not have this same absolute protection.

The protection is instead ‘qualified’ – and so is subject to a condition.

This condition is (in general terms) that the report – or other repetition – is not malicious.

(This condition is the general effect of the august Parliamentary Papers Act 1840 and the Defamation Act 1996.)

This therefore means a person can be sued for defamation (and perhaps for other things) for reporting or repeating what is said in parliament when in doing so they acting maliciously.

The onus is on the claimant to show this malice.

So this means that a potential claimant can sue – and thereby threaten to sue – a person who is reporting or repeating what is said in parliament.

The potential claimant and their lawyers would have to meet a high threshold if there were to issue such a claim and demonstrate malice – and it may be that they will fail to do so.

But nothing at law stops them issuing the threats.

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How this all should work in an internet age where footage from parliament TV can be captured and circulated instantly is not clear.

For example I would not publish the footage of Seely above until and unless I saw it reported in Hansard, as I would want the protection of the 1840 Act.

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There is the eternal question of what constitutes ‘malice’.

 

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And there is also a question about whether lawyers for potential claimants can make over-stated libel threats when they have no evidence of malice.

As Professor Richard Moorhead explains there are general professional conduct rules about what can and cannot be in a threatening letter from a law firm:

The Solicitors Regulatory Authority states the following about solicitors’ professional duties in respect of disputes:

In essence – libel claimant lawyers cannot (and should not) threaten legal proceedings lightly – and if they do, there can be professional repercussions for those lawyers.

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Perhaps there should be further protections.

For example: in respect of infringements to registered intellectual property rights (eg trade marks and patents), the Intellectual Property (Unjustified Threats) Act 2017 prevents lawyers from making baseless threats.

Perhaps this should be extended to defamation threats.

And barristers and solicitors are under general professional obligations not to allege fraud without satisfactory evidence.

Presumably it would not be impossible for a similar rule to prevent baseless defamation threats, especially where there is no evidence of malice.

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None of the above suggests – or is intended to suggest – that any particular claimant firm is making such baseless threats.

Instead the above points to the protections that those receiving the threats have (or should have) so as to be confident that such threats are not baseless.

And it also points to the high hurdle that any claimant firm needs to meet so as to allege malice when making such a threat.

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We do have the gap in the law between absolute privilege for parliamentarians and only qualified privilege for those outside who report and repeat what those parliamentarians say.

It is a gap which in my view should be filled, and one which is not sensible (or sustainable) in the internet age.

But it is gap that has not yet been filled.

And so yes – as Seely said, it is possible for a law firm to threaten newspapers and others for what is said in parliament.

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For completeness, this is not a new problem either for parliamentarians or for those reporting on what they say.

Those with good memories will recall the Trafigura matter – which was not about defamation but confidentiality – where a member of parliament said something which seemed to be subject to (and thereby in breach of) a court injunction.

(And to demonstrate my own personal lack of malice – this is a link to how Trafigura’s lawyer saw what happened.)

So none of this is a new issue – and it is one that goes to the very essence of a separation of powers.

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Disclosure: I happen to be a qualified solicitor, and I still help clients facing libel and other claims, and so this post is informed by that experience.

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The United Kingdom government is rushing through anti-oligarch legislation without proper scrutiny

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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This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.

Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome.