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Telegraph | Opinion | Home Front
“Look out! More Bills on their way

Here we go again. Pausing only to take on fuel, the legislative locomotive that last Friday ran into the buffers of the last parliamentary session will tomorrow begin another journey, spewing laws and regulations into the chill autumn air.

Over the past year, some 40 Acts of Parliament and more than 3,500 statutory instruments were brought in. Of course, governments have to legislate where it is needed, though you would have thought that after a few centuries of parliamentary democracy it would have been possible by now to devise a criminal justice or education system that could last longer than a year or so; to expect ministers to spend a bit more time at home and leave things alone is probably too much to ask.”

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But what happened to the promise of a Bill to remove the remaining 92 hereditary peers from the Lords and the creation of an independent appointments commission to select non-party members of the Upper House? It was dropped in the spring, ostensibly because Tony Blair felt he had no realistic chance of getting it through Parliament. But he was also concerned that efforts would be made to introduce a democratically elected element in the Lords when what the Government wanted was a fully appointed chamber. It is ironic that ministers made so much during the final stages of the Hunting Bill about the Lords thwarting the wishes of the elected Commons, when they have no intention of giving the Upper House the democratic legitimacy that would render this argument - and the use of the Parliament Act - redundant.

What is always fascinating about a Queen’s Speech is what it does not say. Take this passage from last year’s: “The threat of international terrorism and a changing climate have led to a series of emergencies and heightened concerns for the future. My Government will introduce a Bill creating a long-term foundation for civil contingencies capable of meeting these challenges at a national and local level.” Nothing wrong with that, though there is already a system for dealing with civil defence matters, albeit many years old. But where did it say: “My Government will take the most sweeping and draconian powers ever bestowed upon a British government in peacetime, reserving the right to suspend the foundations of our liberties, such as habeas corpus and the Bill of Rights, when it judges that an emergency has occurred”?

Yet, this is what the Civil Contingencies Act allows, and, as is often the case, its exceptional nature only really dawned upon Parliament at a late stage, leading to a flurry of 11th-hour attempts to hose it down. Peers introduced what is known as a “sunset” clause, whereby the measure would lapse after three years unless renewed. This was resisted by the Government, though ministers in the end agreed that if the emergency powers were used, there would be an independent inquiry afterwards to see if they had been properly deployed.

Other than ruling out conscription, there is one exception in the legislation, and one only. The right to strike is specifically exempted from its scope. This seems bizarre. Since the powers are to be used only in the direst circumstances, surely the one thing that the country would not need is for key workers, such as train drivers or firemen, to be taking industrial action. The likelihood must be that they would do their jobs like everyone else when the security of the nation is at stake, but why exempt strikers?

The Government said existing laws ensuring that industrial action did not endanger human life would hold good in these circumstances. It considered that the right to withdraw labour within the law was a fundamental liberty that should be protected, even during emergencies. Yet the same could be said about all the other laws that would be suspended, not least freedom of speech.