Influences of Law-Making in UK Parliament: Brexit Bill

In this report, I will start of by
selecting a statute and will explain how the statute is differently influenced.
I will later evaluate the law-making process both inside and outside of
Parliament. Finally, I am going to conclude on the effectiveness of the
law-making processes both inside and outside of parliament.

Brexit Bill

U.K. and European Union negotiators
have reached an outline deal on the Brexit bill, the country will have to pay
when it leaves, which is one of the key obstacles in their talks. Even if the
plan still needs the confirmation of EU member states, U.K. Prime Minister
Theresa May was expected to present the offer on 4^th December when she meets European
Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. The EU was asking for at least 60
billion euros, while the U.K. has never put a number on it. EU officials have
said that “any final figure would be covered to help the U.K. government sell
the unpopular settlement to doubtful voters.”

Influences to the Brexit Bill

Parliament is the supreme law-making
body in the United Kingdom, and can make or amend laws as they wish. Most ides
for new laws and bills come from the government, as they are the ones who are
elected to rule/govern the country to implement its political agenda. However,
there ways in which the public may contribute and influence a change within the
law; the main influences are: the Law Commission, pressure groups, and the
media.

The Law Commission

The Law Commission is an independent,
and permanent body set up by the Law Commissions Act 1965. Its role is to keep
the laws of England and Wales kept checked up and also to suggest any changes
where it is needed. It focuses on the codification of laws which already exist,
and also focus on the repeal of obsolete law. Codification is bringing together
all of the law on a particular topic in a single Act of Parliament. Repeal of
obsolete law is when the Law Commission removes out-of-date, and old laws. The
Law Commission has a full time staff headed by five Law Commissioners, and one
of them is the Chairman. They mainly look over areas of law that were referred
to them by the Government.

The Law Commission does not have any
influence on the Brexit Bill.

Pressure Groups

Pressure groups are groups of people
who have a similar interest/ideas in making changes in the law, and also to try
influence government and parliament to pass laws on matters which interest
them. The can range from a very small group of people to a large amount of
people (near the millions). The may use many different ways to succeed in their
influencing; they may do that by holing petitions, marches, demonstrations,
strikes, or publicity operations which include advertising. There are different
types of pressure groups and these include sectional, this sector focuses on
promoting their members’ interests and ideas. Also, there are pressure groups
and they focus on promoting a general belief or idea they came up as a group.
Furthermore, insider groups focus on influencing the government ministers and
official law-makers in order to achieve what they desire. Finally there are
outsider groups, and due to them not having access to lawmakers, they use
direct actions or barely legal ways to promote their ideas and beliefs.

UKIP (pressure groups) influenced the
Brexit Bill by persuading some people to vote out of the European Union by only
giving a speech about the good outcomes, and did not warn them about

The Media

The media is a wide term which covers
the channels by which the information is reported. Commonly, the media spreads
its news through TV, radios, newspapers and magazines. Nowadays media also uses
a faster way to spread their news which is through the Internet and especially
social media. All these forms of media are allowing to to inform the public and
therefore allowing to represent and assist in structuring public opinions. The
media and pressure groups have a very strong link between each other, due to
this lawmakers in Parliament use social media to encourage engagement and the
interpretations of view.

The media (newspaper) influenced the
Brexit Bill by putting their own political views forward and convinced people
to vote out such as the Sun, who have been supporting The Conservatives party.
A source of media, like The Sun, who supports the same ideas as a party can
help the party to increase the number of people who follow the same views.

Statutory Interpretation

The Purposive Approach

The case of Mr S. Wesson, who committed
a robbery at a post office with a toy plastic gun, can be guided using the case
of R v Bentham (2003) where in the act of a robbery the defendant had held his
finger in his pocket to make the victim think that he was pointing a gun at him
to intimidate him. The victim then appealed against a conviction for possession
of an imitation firearm. Due to this a purposive approach had to be adopted.
Purposive approach comes from the European Court of Justice, it reviews the
legislation and it looks at the purpose of it as a whole. Also, the Firearms
Act 1968 will apply because Section 17 of the Firearms Act 1968 Schedule 1
states “It is an offence for a person to make or attempt to make any use
whatsoever of a firearm or imitation firearm with intent to resist or prevent
the lawful arrest or detention of himself or another person.” Also Schedule 2
states “If a person, at the time of his committing or being arrested for an
offence specified in Schedule 1 to this Act, has in his possession a firearm or
imitation firearm, he shall be guilty of an offence under this subsection
unless he shows that he had it in his possession for a lawful object.” As
result to this, Mr S. Wesson is to be found guilty for possession of an
imitation firearm.

The Golden Rule

The case of Mrs T. Street, who killed
her husband but wanted to claim his estate as she is named as the sole
beneficiary in his will, can be guided by the precedent of Re: Sigsworth (1935)
where the son (the murderer) would have inherited her estate, making him the
beneficial party of the crime, there were no ambiguous words in the act,
therefore the court did not agree to let a murderer benefit from his crime, so
this led the court to decide that the literal rule should not be applied and
therefore the golden rule was used to prevent the repugnant situation. The
Golden Rule is an extension of the literal rule and it is only used when an
unjust decision has been decided. This rule has two approaches: the narrow
approach and the broad approach. In Mrs T. Street’s case a broad approach was utilised,
it is only used when a word or phrase has only one meaning but exploiting the
single meaning would lead to absurdity. As a result, Mrs T. Street should be
found guilty because a criminal should never benefit from their crimes as it is
absurd.

How influences affect the law making in Parliament

Pressure groups can affect the law
making in parliament in a positive way because they can raise public awareness
of an issue, for example “AllOut”, a pressure group who stands up for
international LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) rights, mainly
uses new media. They make YouTube videos, online petitions, and post content on
social media to spread the knowledge of encourage people to stand up against
injustice and abuse suffered by the LGBT. Additionally, large pressure groups
could have a big membership, which politicians can do nothing about, for
example, the National Trust, which represents two million members, are able to
raise awareness of issues of importance to a large number of people. Finally,
pressure groups have detailed knowledge of their interests to be able to put
their points and ideas forward convincingly. On the other hand, pressure groups
can affect the law making in parliament in a negative way because pressure
groups may not be able to able to present an objective, balanced argument and
may be biased. For example, the Father 4 Justice group in essence are doing
their best to help the children of the family (the public). Additionally,
members of a group may be prepared to use violence and criminal actions to put
their views in the eye of everyone. For example, this include incidents such as
when animal activists attacked scientific laboratories that experiment on
animals, and therefore could threaten the workers and their families in order
to put their views forward. Finally, some people who represent and support a
pressure groups may represent only a small section of the population. However,
if the pressure group is influential then they can still have a chance to
change some laws.

The Law Commission can affect the law
making in parliament in a positive way because they develop considerable legal,
and political knowledge is not needed. The wording of their bills and their
investigations are very accurate and therefore this results to their
recommendations being well informed. This means that problems are avoided when
the law is brought into force. Also, they are an independent body, which means
that the Law Commission makes sure that the all law is being kept under review,
and not just the areas the Government wants to put their focus on. Finally, a
bill is drafted to be attached to the report written to the Government. This
therefore allows the bill to be based completely on the Commission’s research,
this results to the bill taking less time to be introduced into Parliament. On
the other hand, the Law Commission can affect the law making in parliament in a
negative way because a vast majority of their recommendations are not carried
out. This means that the Government does not have to introduce any of the Law
Commission’s proposals. Also, the Law Commission’s investigations of the law
can be very time consuming, and therefore this could take them time to produce
a report. Finally, Government does not have to consult Law Commission  on changes to the law. Therefore, major
changes are made without the benefit of the Law Commission’s legal knowledge
and extensive research. As a result this shows the Law Commissions lack of
power.

The media can affect the law making in
parliament in a positive way because they can lead and raise public awareness,
which is imperative for the Government to consider when making legislative
reforms. Ultimately, the Government is answerable to the electorate, and fears
the loss of the public’s support because this could mean that they may lose in
an election. Also, the media’s raises Government attention of some matters, and
assists the Government to know about the public’s concerns and ideas. For
example, after the shooting of several pupils at a school in Dunblane in 1996,
an anti-handgun pressure was set up and it was called Snowdrop Campaign.
Several newspapers and TV channels assisted in increasing the awareness of
Snowdrop Campaign in order for their beliefs to be heard by the Government and
the public. This therefore allowed a legislation to ban handguns. On the other
hand, the media can affect the law making in parliament in a negative way
because some traditional sources of media are not neutral or equitable, such as
newspapers because they can promote their own political views and other views
as well. For example, The Sun originally supported The Conservative Party and
reported favourably on the politics of the Thatcher Government. Finally,
newspaper are businesses who are looking for profit, therefore this could mean
that they may publish articles that will sell more copies rather than actually
inform the public of threats or other issues. They can easily start a public
panic over a matter that occurs very rarely but still manage to worry the
public. For example, this occurred with the News of the World’s “Name and
Shame” campaign.

How interpretations of statutes affect the law
making in Parliament

The different types of interpretation
of statutes can also affect the law-making in Parliament. The Literal Rule can
affect the law making in parliament in a positive way because the parliament’s
power is respected and the duty of the judges in a court is to put forward the
law (made by the parliament) to the spectators attending the dispute. Also,
another advantage of the literal rule could be that when you make decisions
based on this rule, there can be issues with the law, so parliament can later
pass an amending law (which is a law in process of changing by parliament). On
the other hand, the media can affect the law making in parliament in a negative
way because words with more than one meaning can refrain from using the rule
effectively. Another disadvantage of a literal rule is that they presume that
the form of the will be perfect. Moreover, the use of this rule can allow
unjust results to conclude, as it is exemplified in the case of London and
North East Railway v Berriman (1946), where the result was unfair harsh but
according to the literal meaning of “relaying or repairing”, Mr. Merriman’s
window was not entitled to compensation.

The Golden Rule can affect the law
making in parliament in a positive way because It refrains unfair judgments to
take place which can consequence to absurdity from the utilisation of literal
rule. Another advantage for the golden rule is that it opens up a better chance
to end up with the same outcome as the Parliament. Finally, it permits the
court to select a more suitable definition of a word or phrase in an Act. On
the other hand, The Golden Rule can affect the law making in parliament in a
negative way because its use is unreliable, which prevents lawyers to advocate
their clients to the best of their ability, this can as a result not give a
full intel to the clients. Another disadvantage of the golden rule is that it
can be viewed as oppressive due to the power being only granted to the judge on
how to operate this rule. Finally, although the judges are able to escape the
literal rule, they are still constrained in what they can do.

The Mischief Rule can affect the law
making in parliament in a positive way because it is flexible as it allows the
law to be practiced as the Parliament wanted it to be used. Another advantage
for Mischief Rule is that it evades the possibility of absurdity and
unjustness. Finally, it has been authorised by the law Commission in 1969 over
the literal rule and also the golden rule. On the hand, the Mischief Rule can
affect the law making in parliament in a negative way because it is oppressive
to grant too much responsibility to unelected judges, this can be a massive
drawback because in some cases, judges renew the law, which is the parliament’s
job. Another disadvantage of Mischief rule is that it is not always simple to
spot the wrongdoings that the Parliament was meant to remedy. Finally, it is
too old as it was formed in the 16^th Century and therefore
this means that the purposive approach is more suitable to use.

The Purposive Approach can affect the
law making in parliament in a positive way because it reflects on the approach
used by the judges in the European Union courts. On the other hand, this might
be looked down on due to the referendum vote in June 2016. Another advantage of
the purposive approach is that it follows what the same actions as the
Parliament, and also apply a legislation similarly. Finally, its use prevents
absurd and unfair outcomes to occur. On the hand, the Purposive Approach can
affect the law making in parliament in a negative way because this gives a large
amount of power to unelected judges which can be seen as an oppressive decision
by the Parliament. Moreover in some occasions, judges have renewed law
legislations due to the public decisions, therefore it is not up to the judges
to conduct such an act but the Parliament.

Delegated Legislation

By-laws

Mr P. West was arrested for drinking in
the local park. In 2001 Kestley Town introduced a by-law which banned drinking
in public areas. By-laws are made by the local authorities to safeguard incidents
within their own areas. By-laws are usually associated with traffic control,
parking restrictions, or even banning alcohol in some streets. Moreover,
by-laws can be put forward by public companies and organisations, for instance,
railway companies can ban smoking in stations or/and on the train. By-laws are
controlled the relevant government ministers, local authorities and companies.
All by-laws are approved by the relevant Government Minister. For example, the
by-laws formed by Hampshire County Council to regulate the employment of
children (under the Children and Young Person Act 1933) were approved by the
Secretary for Health. These Government Ministers make sure that every laws that
are made locally are looked over by people with professional knowledge of the
subject.

Statutory Instruments

Mrs. E. Porter was caught by the police
using her mobile phone while driving through the local town centre.  This
is banned by Statutory Instrument No. 2695 – The Road Vehicles Regulation 2003.
Statutory instruments are laws which are produced by government ministers to
set out on a certain area under their responsibilities. Some statutory
instruments could possibly be quite brief, like making the yearly minimum wage
change. On the hand, other statutory instruments may be too complex with very
developed rules that are over-complicated to put it in an Act of Parliament.
Statutory instruments are controlled by Members of Parliament and Peers, this
committee looks at all the statutory instruments and gets of the House of
Parliament to the points of consideration.

Control on Delegated Legislation

After an Act is passed there will be
checks from Parliament regarding the use of power within that act and if it is
being used for the right purpose. These checks are processed through the
following ways:

• Affirmative resolution
• Negative resolution
• Super-affirmative resolution procedure
• Questions
• Scrutiny committees

Affirmative Resolution

A Statutory Instrument will not be able
to become a law unless it has the Parliament’s approval. For example, the Human
Rights Act, Section 1 (4) allows the Secretary of State to make any kind of
changes to the Act.

Negative Resolution

Negative resolution is when a statutory
instrument becomes a law unless if parliament rejects its proposition within 40
days. All members of both Houses can bring forth a motion, known as a ‘prayer’.
After that a vote and debate is carried out, therefore if either one of the
Houses decides to pass the motion, the statutory instrument does not become a
law.

Super-Affirmative resolution procedure

This procedure is only applicable when
delegated legislation is under the control the power of the Legislative and
regulatory Reform act 2006, where Parliament is given more power. The Act
allows to give the government ministers a high amount of power to change Acts
of Parliament as they wish.

Questions in Parliament

The responsible government ministers
are to be questioned by the Parliament during a debate or Question Time. This
procedure of control is allowing to grant publicity to delegated legislation
because of the amount of media within the Parliament. Therefore, this can
include questions regarding a proposed regulation they intend to bring forth.

Scrutiny Committees

Scrutiny Committees are selected by the
House of Lords to analyse whether sections of a bill going through Parliament
are used appropriately and fairly. Moreover, they can carry out checks on bills
and they review all statutory instruments to then draw the Houses of Parliament’s
attention towards parts which need consideration. The main reason to send back
statutory instruments to Houses of Parliament is to:

• Enforce a tax or charge, which can only be done by an elected body within the Parliament
• Have a reflective outcome that was not provided by the enabling Act
• Control the legislation when it has gone beyond the powers given under the Enabling Act
• Sustain unusual use of delegated legislation
• Remove or rectify any unclear or defective parts of the bill.

Regulations

Article 288 of the TFEU allows the EU
to be capable of issuing regulations; regulations official in each regard and
specifically appropriate in every Member State. This implies that regulations,
similar to treaties, have an impact and can be depended on by a person in a UK
court. They automatically progress toward becoming law in every Member State,
which don’t need to pass their own particular laws to provide for them. This
was tested in Re Tachographs: Commission v UK (1979), where the wording of Article
288 was explicit, which implied that regulations were automatically law in all
Member State and the UK had to enforce the installation of tachographs.

Directives

Article 288 of the TFEU allows the EU
to be capable of issuing directives. Directives allow each Member State to
choose how to introduce a law at its full potential to accord with directives,
this allows laws to be dependable all around the European Union. Directives
have been put forward in fields like: employment, health and safety, and consumer
law. However, if a Member State fails to announce a law, this can lead to
paying compensation to a body who has lost money due to the failure. This is
seen in the case of Francovich v Italian Republic (1991), where the EU state
was to pay the compensation to a person who suffered loss because of the Member
State failing to introduce an EU directive into their national law.

Decisions

In the European Union, a decision is a
lawful mechanism which is official to the targeted. They are one of three sorts
of lawful instruments which are very likely to be affected under EU law which
can have reasonable restricting impacts on some people. Decisions may be
targeting Member States or individuals.

Impact of EU laws on the UK

When the UK joined the EU, all Member
States exchanged their sovereign lawful rights to the EU. No Member State can
depend on its own law when it is in conflict with EU law. This rule has been as
a result since the UK joined the EU in 1973 and was one of the principle worries
of the Brexit campaigners in the 2016 referendum to leave the EU. While the UK
remains in the EU, the EU has supremacy over UK law. Furthermore, one of the
significant impacts of the European law to English legal system is on direct
applicability or direct effect. For example, the British constitution builds up
that parliament is sovereign. This implies no other law in Britain that are
above laws made by the government. Relative to its sovereignty, Parliament is
the most elevated legislative authority in UK, but no one, except Parliament,
can make law, also no court in UK can limit Parliament’s law making capacity.
Parliament can make whatever laws it needs, and the courts must apply that law,
Parliament’s sphere of legislation has no boundaries; it can administer on any
matter of its picking (E.g. retrospective legislation) and no parliament can
bind a future Parliament. Consequently, Parliament can make or cancel any law
it chooses, and the courts must authorise it.

Conflict

An example of a conflict between the EU law and the UK is when EU law
altered the way English legal system approaches the rights of United Kingdom
citizens. Essentially, the areas affected include those dealing with rights of
the employees, female workers and children. For example, in the case of R v
Secretary of State for Employment ex parte Equal Opportunities Commission
(1994), the House of Lords found that parts of the Employment Protection Act
1978 were conflicting with European Court law on equal treatment for male and
female employees, because the Act gave part-time workers fewer rights than
full-time workers. Another example of a conflict is when the European Court of
Justice stated that national courts were going to ignore any national law that
had opposing ideas to European law. Therefore, it is clear that the European
law has made the English legal system to become less efficient because it
cannot make its own decisions without considering the legal provisions
designated by the EU laws on certain issues. Any doubt as to the primacy of
European Court law over national law was resolved by the European Court of
Justice in Costa v ENEL (1964). The primacy of European Court law controls the
domestic law where it is punitive in nature, therefore this led the English
legal system making a defence of reliance on European Community law.

Evaluation

Law-making inside of Parliament

Law-making in Parliament can have
positive outcomes. The first advantage of parliamentary law-making is that it
is democratic, this means that MPs in the House of Commons are democratically
chosen to make laws. Throughout the debates on the suggested law, each MP
should have the chance to express their view of his/her components. Members of
the House of Lords are not democratically elected, therefore they are not able
to ban or reject a bill that has been approved by the House of Commons. Another
advantage of parliamentary law-making is that it is under the Government’s
control, this means that it controls parliament’s timing for debates and has a
higher chance of winning at each voting stage of the process, however if its
own MPs vote against them they may lose. Also, a government minister who
announces the bill to Parliament has a considerable understanding in the field
of responsibility and the support of a civil service department. Finally,
parliamentary law-making is flexible, which means that it is not just the
Government that has the power to propose new laws, but MPs and Lords have the
power to do so as well. This could help when the Government has not looked over
a certain issue, or when it does not want to be conducted into introducing a
disputed legislation. An example of this could be the Marriage Act 1994, which
permitted marriages to be held in places apart from in churches and registry
offices.

On the other hand, the down side of
making law within Parliament is that the Government still has control over the
Parliament and allows little time for private members’ bills to form. The
Government has too much power over others, due to its capability of bypassing
the House of Lords by putting into effect the Parliament Acts. Another
disadvantage of parliamentary law-making could be that it is very time
consuming, this because of the bill which has to go through the legislative stages,
which can take months and therefore important legislations will take time to
come into force. Finally, when making a bill, the people making the bill use
ambiguous words (words that have more than one mean), and this is a
disadvantage because 75% of the cases heard are about interpretations of words.

Law-making outside of Parliament

An advantage of making law outside of
parliament is that it does not go through a long process, and therefore can be
very helpful in emergencies, this is because it does not follow the
Parliamentary procedure, which would not be ideal in cases of emergencies.
Additionally, those with law making knowledge can help form and take part to
legislation, nonetheless, Parliament still has a bit of control over the
construction of the law. For example, local councils have a better knowledge of
the local residents. Bristol City Council has many by-laws regarding the
Clifton and Durdham Downs. Furthermore, there is some form of parliamentary
control over delegated legislation. Within Parliament, statutory instruments
are enforced to affirmative or negative resolutions or are scrutinised by the
Scrutiny Committee. Finally, delegated legislation is democratic to an extent,
this is because government ministers are elected and they hold the responsibility
for issuing statutory instruments and approving by-laws.

On the other hand, laws made outside of
Parliament are made by elected Parliament members. Also, there is very little
publicity for the making of laws outside of Parliament, this means that a vast
majority of laws that are being made are not being put out for the public to be
aware of it. Additionally, there is no effective control, this means that many
of the parliamentary controls are restricted in effect. For example, not every
statutory instruments are enforced to an affirmative or negative resolution,
and these may be ignored. Finally, law-making outside of Parliament could be
undemocratic to an extent, this is because delegated legislation is not debated
by Parliament, unless statutory instruments enforce to the affirmative
resolution.

Conclusion

In my opinion, I believe that
parliamentary law-making is more appropriate than delegated legislation. This
is because the legislative process (which is passing a bill through the House
of Lords and the House of Commons, and finally getting Royal Assent) is very
accurate but time consuming. There are several circumstances for debates,
amendments, and making sure that any mistakes can be rectified, this is due to
the three readings and two stages in each Houses of Parliament. Whereas
delegated legislation contradicts the separation of powers, this means that
delegated legislation stands against the principles of separation of powers.
Under this principle, there are three sectors of power: the executive, the
legislature, and the judiciary.

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