eurealist.co.uk

The Adams Smith Institute

By Dr Eamonn Butler

There are of course many old laws still in place in the United Kingdom. Some years ago, Lord Harris of High Cross formed what he called the ‘Repeal Group’ in the attempt to get them wiped off the statute book. But most people, especially busy parliamentary business managers, could not see the point of repealing laws that nobody took a blind bit of notice of anyway.

Harris was right. If laws are on the statute book, it is a hostage to fortune that some bloody-minded politician will resurrect and use them, even though they are no longer relevant to today’s circumstances…………. But you only need to look at how modern laws are stretched by the police and others – holding a heckler at the Labour Party conference and a cyclist in Dundee under anti-terrorist laws, or arresting a women harmlessly reading out the names of war dead by the Cenotaph in London’s Whitehall.

My concern that bad laws can come back to bite us unless ruthlessly culled is made all the more poignant by the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill now going through the House of Commons. It empowers ministers to amend or repeal any law, supposedly in order to adjust minor administrative inconveniences. The trouble is that a tyrannical government could use the measure to do what it liked, without the minor administrative inconvenience of Parliament. Indeed, when you look at this idea, you might well conclude that such tyranny has already arrived.

Technorati Tags: Law, Regulatory Reform Bill, tyrannical government, Parliament