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I
had inteded to let thing lie fallow here for a few more days, until the
new improve Liberty Central was ready to go, but I cannot pass up on
the news that the Cabinet Office has, today, published a set of
amendments to the dreaded Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. Having only just received this information - full details from the Cabinet Office here
- I've yet to find time to fully digest the extent of the changes
and, in particular, the extent to which this constituents an
improvement in the Bill itself. At first sight a number of the
Government's revision, especially the revised section 1 of the Bill,
look set to improve matters considerably in being specific as to the
precise purpose of orders made under that section and the constraints
and limitations under which they can be made, which no require that
such orders may only remove one or more of the following 'burdens': (a) a financial cost;
(b) an administrative inconvenience;
(c) an obstacle to efficiency, productivity or profitability; or
(d) a sanction, criminal or otherwise, for doing or not doing anything in the course of any activity.
Against
this, section 6 of the Bill, which confers power, by order, to create
new minor criminal offences with sentences of less than two years
imprisonment appears to have survived largely intact and with only
minor textual amendments being put forward. We continue to have
serious reservations about this section of the Bill both on principle -
put simply we do not believe that a Government should be hand the power
to introduce new imprisonable offences into criminal law without full
Parliamentary scrutiny and primary legislation - and also about the
intent that lies behind this section. This Government has show a
tendancy, elsewhere, to use the criminal law as back-up to what amounts
to little more than edicts from officialdom - the Identity Cards Act is
littered with examples where simply not giving information to a
government functionary on demand can leave you with a criminal record
and a hefty fine. The same is true when it comes to Council Tax
valuations, where its now a criminal offence to refuse to admit a
valuation officer to your home if they turn up on your doorstep. The
concern here should be obvious - whatever other changes may arise out
these amendments, the Government is still trying to hand itself the
near unrestrained power to criminalise citizens simply for refusing to
play ball with the demands of the State with the minimum of
Parliamentary scrutiny. The potential exists, through this Bill, for
the proliferation of State intrusion in the private lives of citizens,
backed up by criminal sanctions, and all slipped in through the back
door at the stroke of a Ministerial pen and with minimum of attention -
in fact one half suspects this is precisely why the Government is
seeking to reserve such powers to itself. We'll need more time to
work through the detail of these amendments but, at first glance, it
seems that there are still major concerns about the scope of the Bill
and the extent to which it confers new powers on Government with only
limited scope for proper scrutiny, so we'll reserve our full judgement
for the moment until we've had time to mull things over properly.
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