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Delegated Legislation - Coggle Diagram
Delegated Legislation
parliament passes a parent/enabling act - gives framework of the law and then delegates power to others to make a more detailed law in the area - act gives the right to create one of the following types of DL
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this is law that is made by some person or body other than parliament, but with authority of parliament - power can be given to privy council, gov ministers, local authorities, local businesses
Reasons & Ads and Disads
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Ads & Disads
advantages:
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expertise: better to use technical expertise/local knowledge when making detailed laws for industry/local areas
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control: both parliamentary & judicial help to avoid abuse of power by minister or other with DL powers
disadvantages:
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sub-delegation: means that law making authority is handed down another level. brings comment that much law is made by unelected civil servants and rubber stamped by minister of department
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DL contains obscure wording that leads to difficulty in understanding the law & judges need to interpret meaning
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parliamentary controls - parliament has initial control on DL as enabling act sets boundaries within which the DL is to be made - will state types of laws to be made and whether they can be made for whole country or certain places, and whether the gov department must consult other people before making regulations
parliament can also repeal powers in enabling act at any time
delegated powers scrutiny committee in house of lords - considers whether the provisions of any bills delegate legislative power inappropriately - reports findings to house of lords before committee stage of the bill
pre-drafting consultation: gov department can consult with all interested parties and can take their views into account when drafting regulations - not bound to do so
scrutiny committee: more effective check is the existence of a join select committe on statutory instruments/scrutiny committee.
committee reviews all statutory instruments and where necessary will draw attention of both houses of parliament to points that need further consideration - review is a techy one and not based on policy - main grounds for referring a statutory instrument back to house of parliament are that it:
- imposes a tax/charge: only elected body has this right
- appears to have retrospective effect that was not provided for by enabling act
- appears to have gone beyong powers given under enabling act/makes some unusual/unexpected use of those powers
- unclear/defective in some way
scrutiny committee can only review on these grounds and it has to report back its findings - no power to alter any statutory instrument
negative resolutions: most other statutory instruments will be subject to negative resolution - means that the relevant instrument will be law unless rejected by parliament in 40 days
main problem - in view of the number of instruments issued, very few will be looked at in parliament
questioning: individual ministers may be questioned by MPs in parliament on the work of their departments & can include questions about proposed regulations
affirmative resolutions: small number of statutory instruments will be subject to an affirmative resolution - means that instrument will not become law unless specifically approved by parliament - will have to be debated before it can operate
need to pass an affirmative resolution will be incl in enabling act
main prob - parliament cant amend instrument - only be approved/annulled/withdrawn by gov minister