Bermuda – for Bermuda, not for the UK

Countryside (Scotland) Act 1967 Here the question arises again. Why does Scotland need a separate act from the UK? There is the equivalent law in the England for rights of way, planning, compenstation for land. I’m sure that New Zealand has a similar act.

You argument seems to be because there are separate legistlatures in the UK that because each choose to enact similar laws, that there is a difference.

ie. Each is effectively implementing a variant of the same law.

The legistalation for the EU comes from the EU. It’s a rubber stamp. Not created here.

So bar taxation, (which the Lords have no say over), there are no real differences.

Quite why too we need more and more legistlation is also farcical.

Bermuda – for Bermuda, not for the UK

Countryside (Scotland) Act 1967 Here the question arises again. Why does Scotland need a separate act from the UK? There is the equivalent law in the England for rights of way, planning, compenstation for land. I’m sure that New Zealand has a similar act.

“Bicameral systems such as the UK haven’t prevented disasterous legislation or fraud by politicians.”

& neither will they, but it is better to have checks and balances than not.

“…all politicians are open to preasures. Bribery to toeing the party line.
However, the electorate isn’t…”

I think I have to disagree, the electorate seems singularly open to bribery. The last election in NZ was won on promises of nice juicy tax cuts for most – amid cries from the former government that these were not affordable – after the election … lo! & behold! All the promised tax cuts could no longer be afforded – because of course the former government had withheld the full figures!

“a law that the UK should have and NZ shouldn’t have”

Try these (all from the same year, and all still on the books):

• Bermuda Constitution Act 1967 (c. 63)

• Countryside (Scotland) Act 1967 (c. 86)

• Greenwich Hospital Act 1967 (c.74)

• Irish Sailors and Soldiers Land Trust Act 1967 (c. 67)

• Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod Act 1967 (c.49)

• Police (Scotland) Act 1967 (c.77)

New Zealand does of course have similar legislation to all of these.

“the UK is more complex and needs more laws”

It is.

Even without considering legislation on the books that relates to overseas territories, and parts of the former empire, the UK comprises multiple jurisdictions: England & Wales; Scotland; & Northern Ireland being the most common three way split, but some laws for example only apply to Wales – there is a Bill about marriages in Wales going through the mill at the moment which will only apply there. We have not yet considered other parts of the British Isles, such as the Isle of Mann and the Channel Islands. And then there is all the legislation required to take part in the EU.

By comparison, and again, without considering legislation on the books that relates to overseas territories and such, New Zealand is just New Zealand.

I am not really sure that adjusting for these differences, NZ would have materially fewer laws on the statute books. It might look that way if you just counted up the number of laws passed by the parliament of New Zealand, but one thing to remember is that we have laws like the English Law Act 1858 (or I think that’s the year), which brought all English law that could be seen to be relevant to the colony into effect as though it had been so as of January 1840. This law is still on the books – except in so far as it has been later repealed – yet will not appear in any list of NZ legislation per se.

As you point out Jana, all politicians are open to preasures. Bribery to toeing the party line.

However, the electorate isn’t. If all bills have to be approved by a referenda, you can’t easily bribe the electorate [There are ways, you just give the bill to the next generation]

This also deals with the problem that people aren’t interested in politics, because basically any vote is a vote for a ‘representative’ [who then toes the party line and not a vote for a policy.

Even a vote for a manifesto is a vote for a set of policies and is sub optimal.

As I keep pointing out and the Lords keep ignoring it, there is no cost control. They won’t justify the near 2,000 pounds a day per Lord.

They can’t justify their failures either. Habeaus Corpus has gone. Trials where you don’t know the evidence. They have all allowed it and the list is longer.

So as a Kiwi, can you tell me of a law that the UK should have and NZ shouldn’t have?

The Lords have stated that the UK is more complex and needs more laws.

Nick

Perhaps I have been misunderstood. I was responding to the post above by a “Gareth Howell”, albeit with a different icon, which said:

“Reduce the number of peers to 250.”

I assume this, in turn, was in response to the reported comments of Sir John Major that: “Government is too big”. This, of course, I took to mean the machinery of government as a whole, not the ‘government’ per se.

My main point was that cutting numbers is often not easy to do well, even if it were a good idea – and upon the latter I did not comment.

There are power struggles in all organizations in which a sufficient number of people are involved. Two can be enough.

Proliferation of assemblies notwithstanding, I do not believe there can be any good argument for unicameral system in the UK. And this is so, despite the fact that the constitutional position of the Queen as Head of State would not of necessity be affected at all by such an arrangement.

It is relevant at this point to mention that I am beaming into this discussion from New Zealand, which operates a unicameral legislature. Legislation in this country is not the richer for it. It is certainly not better drafted, nor do I believe it is likely to be cheaper.

The New Zealand legislature does however benefit, as do many around the world from the UK’s bicameral system, and in particular from the expertise housed in the Lords. UK Bills (& Acts) addressing complex and/or technical subject matter are often grabbed and fed through the legislative process here, being of course reconsidered for local use (e.g. anti-spam legislation).

Unicameral systems are highly susceptible to making bad law in controversial cases by pandering to what is, or seems to be, wanted by the voting public – the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 (NZ) is a notable example. They are also much freer to please their special interest groups.

The best defence is a robust bicameral system, in which the two houses are constituted along meaningfully different lines. If both are slaves to party politics, then rubber-stamping or ‘oppositionitis’ depending on how the numbers happen to fall, are a natural consequence.

I fail to see how the elected hereditary peers are either a safeguard for the monarchy or an obvious victory for the political right.

The hereditary peers may tend to be politically ‘conservative’ (and I mean that in the general sense not merely the party political sense), but then so will most of those possessing the kind of expertise that can create Acts like the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 (as discussed in the Baroness Deech’s latest post).

The great benefit with the hereditary peers is that they are not necessarily adherents of one party or another. According to parliament’s website
http://www.parliament.uk/mpslordsandoffices/mps_and_lords/analysis_by_composition.cfm, although 48 hereditary peers sit as conservatives, 33 are cross-benchers.

The long-standing tendency of the Lords (mentioned elsewhere in these pages, though I am not too sure where, or by whom) to be less bound by party-politics must in part be due to their influence in shaping the House, and because of their relative freedom from influence.

Notwithstanding legislation that has nearly completely pushed them out, the hereditary peers also come with their own source of legitimacy – they have been there as of right for a very, very long time.

Clearly some traditions, such as hanging people – however popular its reintroduction might be – are better gone. Overall, the hereditary peers don’t seem to have done a bad job. Their loss, and with it perhaps the loss of their peculiar brand of independence, is not to be applauded.

There can be no doubt that the Lords has been hugely enriched by the introduction of the life peers, but there seems to be no particular reason why the tradition of some hereditary peers sitting should not continue.

Tradition, after all, has given us a much finer Head of State than elections served up to the United States in the form of George W. Bush.

He pretty regularly arises to troll on the BBC’s morning news programmes, always to be announced as making one of his rare perfprmances . .

. . . invariable to coruscate HMG when they have been doing something Geo Osborne (BART) might come round to in a few days time.

Amusingly it has been mooted that such as he may return to Government should Chameleon get lucky, but chances of this catastrophic eventuality are not widely believed to be enhanced by Sir John’s looming presence . . .

I don’t know that I am keen on culling Members of Parliament or even peers.

There are of course some left wing Labor members who are anti-bi-cameral arrangements, who disappear entirely from public view once they have retired
from the other place.

There are very sound arguments for a unicameral system of government in the UK, especially with the proliferation of Assemblies both legislative and non legislative, in the UK regions and at Strasbourg.

There is no power struggle in the sense that we normally use the term between rank and file MPs! What would be the point?!

We have just had a far reaching re-organization of the second chamber, which was hard fought in debate.

The problems of re-arranging just to have one chamber, are again so far reaching that it is unlikely to occur for a very long time.

The place of the monarch in a uni-cameral
system would probably be the most difficult question of all.

I sometimes wonder whether anybody outside parliament recognized how radical the changes effected by Lord Falconer were, and what the implications.

The safeguard of the elected hereditary peers
was obviously a victory for the political right.

Having two ceremonial Presidents of parliament (and neither of them called that)
takes some thinking about, although I understand Lord Speaker is getting more of a work load than at first envisioned.

Thanx to L Norton for the Public bills committees’ knowledge.

What I suspect is going on is this. Politicians are looking for what is called a plausible excuse.

ie. If you can pass the blame to ‘government’ then you can plausibly deny you had any involvement.

So Lord Norton is trying to say that he has no control over the laws because that is controlled by government (defined as the party in power) as opposed to the opposition (the parties not in power).

Now you and I have a different definition. We view government as the collection of people who are governing us. Government is the group of people who get to decide on laws and tell us what to do.

However, what is interesting is that it is more evidence that the Lords do not matter. After all if the laws are decided by the government, Lord Norton isn’t really making the law. If he’s not making the law, why are we paying 1,800 pounds a day, per lord, for nothing?