The legislative process

The great majority of Acts of Parliament are introduced by the Government – these are initially drafted by lawyers in the civil service who are known as Parliamentary Counsel to the Treasury. Instructions as to what is to be included and the effect the proposed law is intended to have, are given by the government department responsible for it.

The first and most important step in most cases is for the Government to decide that it wishes the legislation to be passed. Once this decision has been taken, and so long as public opinion does not cause the Government to change its mind, the legislation will pass through Parliament and become law, because of the Government's effective command of a majority in the House of Commons. On some issuesthe Government will first seek the response of interested parties by the publication of a consultative paper. After considering the response, advance noticeof the more definite proposals is given in a White Paper.

A formal requirement is that the bill must be approvedby both Houses of Parliament, with ample opportunity for debate both in the Commons and in the Lords. In spite of Government control of the Commons, Parliament is not a mere rubber stamp, because it gives opportunities for members to question, criticize, publicize, explain and amend the detailed provisions or the bill, and few bills emerge without at least some amendments.

To become an Act of Parliament a bill must receive the Royal Assent, which today is never refused. A bill thereupon becomes an Act of Parliament and, unless otherwise provided, takes effect from the day of Assent. However there has been a growing trend for Acts of Parliament not to be implementedimmediately. Instead the Act itself states the date when it will commenceor pass responsibility on to the appropriate minister to fix the commencement date. In the latter case the minister will bring the Act into forceby issuinga commencement order. This can cause problems of uncertainty as it is difficult to discover which sections of an Act have been brought into force. The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 is a good example of an Act where the sections are being brought in bit by bit. The part of the Act giving employment rights was mostly brought into force in 1996, some parts of the Act which give disabled people rights to access to services were not going to be law until the year 2004. Some parts which relate to access to transport may not be law until 2010.

It may be that some sections or even a whole Act will never become law. An example of this is the Easter Act 1928, which was intended to fix the date of Easter Day. Although this Act passed all the necessary Parliamentary stages, and was given the Royal Assent, ithas never come into force.

It can be seen that with all these stages it usually takes several months for a Bill to be passed. However, there have been occasions where all parties have thought a new law is needed urgently and an Act has been passed in less than 24 hours. This happened with the Northern Ireland Bill in 1972.

So, the process by which an Act is passedis a long one. A Bill may start in either the House of Commons or the House of Lords, with the exception of finance Bills which must start in the House of Commons. All bills must go through the following stages:

First reading

This is a formal procedure where the name and main aims of the Bill are read out. Usually no discussion takes place, but there will be a vote onwhether the House wishes to consider the Bill further. The vote may be verbal: this is when the Speaker of the House asks the members as a whole how they vote and the members shout out ‘Aye’ or ‘No’. If it is clear that nearly all members are in agreement, either for or against, there is no need for a more formal vote. If it is not possible to judge whether more people are shouting ‘Aye’ or ‘No’ there will be a formal vote in which the members of the House voteby leaving the Chamber and then walking back in through one of two special doors on one side or the other of the Chamber. There will be two ‘tellers’ positioned at each of these two voting doors to make a list of the Members voting on each side. These tellers count up the number of MPs who voted for and against and declare these numbers to the Speaker in front of the members of the House.

Second Reading

This is the main debate on the whole Bill in which MPs debate the principlesbehind the Bill. The debate usually focuses on the main principles rather than the smaller details. Those MPs who wish to speak in the debate must catch the Speaker’s eye, since the Speaker controls all debates and no-one may speak without being called on by the Speaker. At the end of this a voteis taken in the same way as for the First Reading: obviously there must be a majority in favour for the Bill to progress any further.

Committee Stage.

At this stage a detailed examination of each clause of the Bill is undertaken by a committee of between 16 and 50 MPs. This is usually done by what is called a Standing Committee, which, contrary to its name, is a committee chosen specifically for that Bill. The membership of such a committee is decided ‘having regard to the qualifications of those members nominated and to the composition of the House’. So, although the Government will have a majority, the opposition and minority parties are represented proportionately to the number of seats they have in the House of Commons, The members of Parliament nominated for each Standing Committee will usually be those with a special interest in, or knowledge of, the subject of the Bill which is being considered. For finance Bills the whole House will sit in committee.

Report Stage

At the Committee stage amendments to various clauses in the Bill may have been voted on and passed, so this report stage is where the committee report back to the House on those amendments. The amendmentswill be debated in the House and accepted or rejected. Further amendments may also be added.

5. Third Reading

This is the final vote on the Bill. It is almost a formality since a Bill which has passed through all the stages above is unlikely to fail at this late stage. In fact in the House of Commons there will only be an actual further debate onthe Bill as a whole if at least six MPs request it. However, in the House of Lords there may sometimes be amendments made at this stage.

The House of Lords

If the Bill started life in the House of Commons it is now passed to the House of Lords where it goes through the same five stages outlined above and, if the House of Lords makes amendments to the Bill, then it will go back to the House of Commons for it to consider those amendments. If the Bill started in the House of Lords then it passes to the House of Commons.

Royal Assent

The final stage is where the monarch formally gives approval to the Bill and it then becomes an Act of Parliament. This is now a formality and, under the Royal Assent Act 1961, the monarch will not even have the text of the Bills to which she is assenting. The last time that a monarch refused assentwas in 1707, when Queen Anne refused to assent to the Scottish Militia Bill.

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 915