eurealist.co.uk

The government is using the 1689 Bill of Rights, which establishes the principle that parliamentary proceedings cannot be questioned by the courts, as one central argument in its legal battle to prevent Gateway reviews into the feasibility and progress of the government’s ID cards project becoming public.

Gateway reviews ID cards project

As reported in ComputerWeekly.com

The irony of this should not be missed, because much of our recent legalisation is in direct opsition to the Bill of Rights which is why many like to argue that the Bill of Rights has no legal meaning, as it has been superseded by later legislation. Although the final ruling in the Metric martyrs case by Lord Justice Laws specifically ruled that this was not the case because the Bill of Rights was a constitutional statute and could not therefore be changed by implication in later legislation.

The Laws Ruling maintained constancy with the concept of parliamentary supremacy because he did not rule that parliament could not change the Bill of rights, only that to do so it would have to do it directly.

As the Bill of Rights has not been changed directly for over three hundred years most of is still relevant. For the government to use the Bill however is going to be problematic, because by implication they are admitting it is still relevant and they cannot just pick and choose which bits they like and continue to ignore the other bits they do not like.

This is particularly interesting because as I mentioned in a previous post our parliament voted down an amendment to the Lisbon Treaty:

Notwithstanding any provision of the European Communities Act 1972, nothing in this Act shall affect or be construed by any court in the United Kingdom as affecting the supremacy of the United Kingdom Parliament.

It would seem our elected leaders want to have their cake and eat it.

Update email exchanges

From: Bill & Ann:

If the government win their case on this then surely the implications

must be that the Bill of Rights precludes the European Court of Justice

from questioning laws passed by parliament.  In other words what Bill

Cash has been trying to achieve in the last few days.  For that reason

alone it is worth watching the outcome. B&A

From Michael Shrimptom:

No, it only applies to parliamentary proceedings.

 The ECJ cannot overturn an Act of Parliament - the Factortame case, which

suggested the contrary, was monist, wrong and is no longer followed by the

courts, thanks to Metric Martyr.