The work of the Constitution Committee

Lord Norton

I have already drawn attention to the work of the Constitution Committee on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill and our recent interim report on the measure.  (You can read the report here.)  We are now embarking on an inquiry into the Bill. We began with our first evidence session last Wednesday (1 November) when we took evidence from Lord Neuberger, recently retired President of the Supreme Court, and Richard Gordon QC.  It will keep us occupied for the rest of the year.

However, we have not let our consideration of the Bill squeeze out completely consideration of other issues.  There is a serious problem now with recruiting judges which has consequences for the delivery of justice in the UK.  We have just published a report on the subject, which is a follow-up to our previous report on the issue.  (You can read the report here.)  As part of our wider inquiry into the legislative process, we have also published a report on the preparation of legislation for Parliament.  How Bills are prepared is obviously important for the quality of law in this country.  One desirable development has been pre-legislative scrutiny, something we wish to encourage.  You can read the report here.

In short, the committee is being kept busy.  We will be busy fulfilling our remit of reporting on Bills of constitutional significance as well as keeping the operation of the constitution under review.  The Committee was established in 2001 – I was the first chair – and it is a committee where one now wonders how we could live without it.

6 comments for “The work of the Constitution Committee

  1. 07/11/2017 at 10:15 pm

    Two questions please –
    (1) How does the Constitution Committee’s “remit” include keeping the Constitution both accessibly up-to-date for the immediate term – (5 to 10 years “party-politically-limited”)
    and ongoingly ‘scrutinisable’ and amendable for the longest-future term (possibly many thousands of years) ?

    – and in that up-dating, how does the Constitution add new knowledge and know-how into itself for the forwards-movement of our “basic needs” and essential ‘wants’ ?
    Needs and wants for both Individual Human Development and Wholistic Wellness Building
    e.g. Mabel Todd’s “The Thinking Body”;
    Beata Jencks’s “Your Body: biofeedback at its best without instruments, machinery and artificiality and the ‘No-Lose Method III of Needs-&-Hows Recognition and Cooperative Problem Solving (Dr Thomas Gordon .
    ———————–
    (2) Who “owns” the Constitutional Committee
    -‘controls’ in practice as well as in Law (“inaccessibly-statutorily” ?)?
    (Honest-Answer – probably the now 1,500 and further-burgeoning Billionaires of the world (?)

  2. 10/11/2017 at 5:59 pm

    I actually want to get my inspiration from really meaningful phrases said by really great men and women like “All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds”, would you know the place I’m able to find thematic compiltaions of those people?

    http://www.ib889.com/skilled-essay-will-help-you-to-succeed-inside-the/

  3. maude elwes
    12/11/2017 at 7:34 pm

    @ JSD Miles

    The main Article in reference to this ‘Vienna Convention’ is number ’54’ on the Law of Treaties A69. It directs that Britain could simply repeal the European Communities Act of 1972 and replace it with UK Law.

    Also search Article 62 of the Vienna convention on the Law of Treaties terminating over sign up of the Lisbon Treaty on the grounds of fundamental change of circumstances. Namely, the British people have ‘withdrawn their consent’ to be bound by The Lisbon Treaty. No Lisbon Treaty sign up = not a member of the EU. Formal notification is all that is necessary.

    Have a rummage through these nice little information packs. It could save a lot of time and effort.

    http://www.mpil.de/files/pdf3/beitr2452.pdf

    There is more food for thought here.

    http://eulawanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/brexit-begins-overview-of-legal-issues.html

    It is said ‘change of circumstance’ alters obligations under ‘good faith’ expectation.

    http://www.mpil.de/files/pdf3/beitr2452.pdf

    • 14/12/2017 at 9:35 pm

      Thank you, maude;
      but that’s a huge bulk of “reading” when the salient Triple-Predicament is clear and concise to be comprehended

      but is being so blindly and studiously avoided
      by Parliaments, University-Powers and People-Numbers alike —

      (1) Earth’s Longest-Term Carrying-Capacity is being over-consumed, wasted, and destroyed and extincted by our Runaway Non-Negotiably Militant Human-Civilisation.

      (2) The World-Domineering tiny-core-elite
      is militantly-adversarially
      suicidally and ‘genocidingly’
      extincting both our Earth-Lifesupports
      and our Population numbers –
      not only by having Western and ‘Leading-Democratic’ peoples consuming (and ‘collaterally’ wasting)
      9-times their fair share of the Whole Earth’s resources and produce (USA)
      and 5-times our fair share (by the UK British population0.
      (3) Those self-same World-Governors have been solidly committing us all to
      “raising up the increasing world billions of overpopulations
      to our 1st and Developed Democratic World’s standard-of-living”
      (as now in the USA, UK. European, ‘Developed-World’ );

      without solving how
      both
      the Earth’s Lifesupports – drinking-water, food, and longest-term-strategic thrival-survival resources are going to be sufficiently increased
      whilst –
      the massively-increased Lethal-Wastes and Pollutions are going to be reversed
      from the extinction-curve they are already sending us down

      and how wthese two Great-Essentials will necessarily be greatly-increased
      and be made all-round Sufficient –
      for both the short-term Politicised 5 -10 year governance policies
      and
      for the Longest-Term thousands-of-years our children’s children will need
      in order ultimately to space-emigrate
      and thus fulfil our Human-Race to “thrivally-survive” the physical-universe’s oncoming super-destructions which will finally end in our complete Solar System’s annihilation
      being ‘swallowed and crushed’ into this whole surrounding galaxy’s centrally ‘self-fattening’ Black-Hole.

      There has to be a short-and-curtly-simple “peaceful-revolution” –

      What do you, the serious reader now think ? – and more vitally what can you and the rest of us actually “do” better, more “longlastingly”and “sustainworthily” ?

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