UK bill amounts to abolishing Parliament, warn Cambridge law professors

[maelorin]

Monday, February 27, 2006
UK bill amounts to abolishing Parliament, warn Cambridge law professors
Alexandria Samuel at 11:00 AM ET

[JURIST] Six law professors at Cambridge University have warned that an innocuous-sounding bill now going through Parliament would give UK government ministers the power to abolish jury trials, place citizens under house arrest, and rewrite the law on nationality and immigration, all without Parliamentary consent. In a letter [text] published Sunday in the Times of London, the scholars urged MPs to take another at the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill [text], which has already received a second hearing and could be adopted as early as next month, and "recognize the dangers of what is being proposed before it is too late." In the name of enabling ministers to cut regulations for business, the bill provides in clause 1 that:

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

Supporters of the bill maintain that the power given to ministers is slight, and note limitations such as a restriction on new crimes invented by ministers, and the prohibition against the creation of new taxes. But in a separate op-ed [text] in The Times, David Howarth, a Reader in Law at Cambridge and also the Liberal Democrat MP for the area, took another view, noting that "All ministers will have to do is propose an order, wait a few weeks and, voila , the law is changed.":

The Government claims that there is nothing to worry about. The powers in the Bill, it says, will not be used for "controversial" matters. But there is nothing in the Bill that restricts its use to "uncontroversial" issues. The minister is asking us to trust him, and, worse, to trust all his colleagues and all their successors. No one should be trusted with such power.

As James Madison gave warning in The Federalist Papers, we should remember when handing out political power that "enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm". This Bill should make one doubt whether they are at the helm now.

The legislative proposal comes at a time when British jurists of various political stripes are becoming increasingly concerned [JURIST report] with undue extensions of power by the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, now in its third term.

The Epoch Times has more.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

My wife & I live in Italy about 60 km. north of Rome and have lived in the country for more than 13 years.
Being pensioners reliant on a state pension, we could not afford to live in Great Britain even if we wished to--which we now do not.
Had I not seen it, I would never have believed that a country could go downhill fast as Great Britain has in the last 15 years.
I read your book with great pleasure despite a few inaccuracies therein; in particular your comment about Berlusconi and hallmarking, (p.426,note 136), is quite untrue.
There seems in the British media and indeed as regards yourself , to be a bias against Italy in general and Signor Berlusconi in particular.
In regard to the latter, he has over the last 4and 1/2 years given the country the most stable government it has had since the Second World War.
The national debt is one he inherited and the inflation in the cost of living consequent upon the introduction of the Euro is the direct consequence of the low, fixed rate of exchange with the Lira, which Prodi when Presidente del Consiglio accepted, it
is said,to further his European political ambitions.
In our experience, in living in and visiting five regions of the country, Italian people are polite,tolerant and indeed have the "live and let live" attitude which used to exist in Great Britain.
There is too much bureaucracy in the shape of too much official
paperwork and punctuality is not an Italian virtue,but in general they are kind and helpful as well as working hard,no doubt in defiance of the 48 hour directive!
Turning to more general matters, the aspect that strikes one is the apparent conspiracy of silence as regards all the political
parties. They all appear uncritically wedded to acceptance of Great Britain's membership of the E.U. as an irreversible fait accompli.
Mr. Cameron's sole activity on the subject appears to be an attempt to court the eastern European countries,presumably in an attempt to create a protest caucus.
No one seems to realise that 345,000 immigrants from eastern Europe,political correctness,the drive towards regionalism,as evidenced most recently in the bill to reduce the number of police authorities to 12, which just happens to be the number of regions into which Brussels has divided Great Britain,the Legislative and Regulatory Bill and the devolution of education and health services are all part of Blair's Grand Design to enmesh Great Britain in the E.U. inextricably, thus realising his plan for a permanently Socialist Great Britain.
I know that this sounds like a conspiracy, but if one looks at everything the government has done since 1997 it is hard to escape such a conclusion.
And no one is doing anything concrete about it.
In fact, the only solution appears to be a Petition to the Crown pursuant to article (5) of the Bill of Rights 1689.

Yours sincerely

K.D.Trickett

[jeffreysmith.livejournal.com]

Tony goes where even George does not.

[(Anonymous)]

tony has more room to move around in than george on such matters.