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Law Commission Bill [Lords]

Amendments 1 and 2 try to introduce a better and tighter definition of when the Bill will take effect and, in particular, of when the production of the first of the reports called for in clause 1 will be required. At the moment, clause 1 is very vague, because it uses the words:""As soon as practicable after the end of each reporting year"." It suggests that the first reporting year would begin on the day that this statute came into force. That would mean that if the Bill obtained Royal Assent this week, the first reporting year would not start until this week and would expire this time next year. By October next year, the time that was "as soon as practicable" after the end of that period would probably be January 2011, perhaps March 2011—in fact, knowing the Government, it might even be December 2011—and that would be the first time that one of these reports would have to be produced on the basis of the definition in clause one. By contrast, the amendments that I and my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) have tabled would require that the first reporting year end on 31 March 2010, and on the same date in each year thereafter. That would mean that the first report would be produced on 31 March next year, nine months or a year ahead of the date proposed in the Bill. Bearing in mind the fact that the Law Commission's most recent annual report for the year 2008-09 covers the year that ended on 31 March, I cannot understand why we cannot have the first of these reports by March 2010 and on that date thereafter every year. That is the proposal and if the Government are true to their word, as they have suggested they are, and if they support the Bill, they should be ready to accept that the reports should be produced sooner than is proposed and that there should be more clarification of when they should be produced. To say that they should be produced "as soon as practicable" is not satisfactory. The previous debate illustrated the extent to which such vague phrases can be exploited by the Government to the detriment of Parliament.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
497 c581 
Session
2008-09
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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