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Friday, 20 December 2019

A typhoon is blowing through government

In the latter part of the 19th century, our legislators realised that government was seriously lagging the monumental changes to the Britain outside SW1. Britain had revolutionised but government was stuck in the past. Actually it was originally, from 1858, just SW. That postal coding in itself was one of the tsunami of reforms, legislative clearing-out, organising and administrative innovations that brought Whitehall into line with a world of trains, post, telegraphs, new towns and cities and the popular press. It all meant that the cobwebs of governance that had accumulated through centuries had to be swept away. The Palace of Westminster itself was rebuilt, and a rank of grand new Portland stone facades hubristic with Imperial pride thrust their chests out onto Whitehall. That's the scale of change it felt like yesterday - no wonder Corbyn looked so glum! Momentum is now definitely owned by the Conservatives (sorry, Owen) and when the great flywheel of state reaches speed, inertial forces will take the nation forward with stunning power. This session of Parliament may last little more than a year - by the Spring of 2021 the government aims to have enacted
  • European Union Withdrawal Bill
  • Agriculture Bill
  • Fisheries Bill
  • Trade Bill
  • Immigration Bill
  • NHS Funding Bill and NHS Long Term Plan
  • Medicines and Medical Devices Bill
  • Health Service Safety Investigations Bill
  • Social Care Reform
  • Education reform
  • Broadband legislation
  • Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill
  • Airline insolvency legislation
  • Railways minimum service legislation
  • Rail reform and High Speed Rail 2 (West Midlands - Crewe) Bill
  • National Security and Investment Bill
  • Science, space and research framework
  • English devolution
  • Employment Bill
  • Housing and renters legislation
  • Building and fire safety legislation
  • Crackdown on terrorists
  • Sentencing reform
  • Serious violence measures
  • Online Harms Bill
  • Police powers
  • Helen’s law
  • Domestic abuse and divorce reform
  • Extradition, foreign offenders and espionage legislation
  • Victims’ law and Royal Commission
  • Environment and animal welfare bill
  • Climate change Bill
  • Constitutional reform
  • Armed forces maintenance
That's quite some programme.

Only one face looked less than ecstatic on the government benches - JRM. He looked in fact as though he'd been given advance warning that he was unlikely to survive on the Treasury bench beyond the February big Cabinet reshuffle. Or perhaps he was merely confused by all the novel regional voices behind him, some of which he could not perhaps quite understand.

22 comments:

Edward Spalton said...

Yet, I heard a Labour spokesman of the more leftish sort complaining how thin and inadequate the government’s programme was!
One does begin to wonder whether the parties live on separate planets or whether MPs in general are incapable of attention and comprehension.

Terence patrick hewett said...

Constitutional reform and devolution of power to the regions massively help those left behind places and shoot the SNP fox.

Scrobs. said...

On hearing some Labour politician saying that the programme for complete divorce by the end of 2020 was nowhere enough time to finalise arrangements, one wonders which planet they've been on for the past three years, and exactly what he/she has been doing!

JPM said...

That's a fairly typical legislative schedule, as was Labour's in 1997.

There were seventy public general Acts, but hundreds of Statutory Instruments.

Most years see thirty to sixty Acts or so.

The private MSM don't report this, and the BBC make no attempt to correct for that as ever. Heaven forfend that they might actually explain the benefits or burdens of these new laws on different categories of people too.

JPM said...

It just shows the "seventy-five percent of our laws are made in Brussels" claim to be utter tripe.

Span Ows said...

Edward Spalton, Michael...they ahd their responses written well before hand and not nimble enough to adjust what they say. Corbyn himself - amongst others - has done the same thing many times; shows lack of intellect.

JPM...all depends what is done: 100 minor acts could take the time of another single major act.

Mrs Proudie of Barchester said...

Hmmmm, no mention of a Repeal Bill to remove Harm's nasty Equalities Act and the Blairite Hate Crime-Hate Speech Laws...

No mention of a Bonfire of the Quangos and NGOs...

Mrs Proudie of Barchester said...

That should read 'Harman's Equalities Act' but the dreaded predictive text kicked in...curses!

Dave_G said...


Comparisons of intent and action should be done on all those proposals at some point in the future.

I have every reason to believe that they will ALL be watered down to a greater extent ('just enough' done to make claims of accuracy to be validated - without any recourse to proper scrutiny) and we STILL see the usual BS on Climate Change included.

What we never see/hear are moves to curtail the practices of the banksters or the control of the media on what we earn/spend or get told about.

The list is all fluff. And we'll spend BILLIONS on it, create ever more bureaucracy to manage it and be in exactly the same place we are NOW despite these 'promises'.

DiscoveredJoys said...

@Mrs Proudie

"No mention of a Bonfire of the Quangos and NGOs..."

Indeed, a disappointment. I hope that Boris thinks it necessary to gradually replace the chairmen of such bodies with conservatively inclined (note the small'c') people and then move on to closing down the superfluous ones. It could take a couple of Parliaments to achieve as moving too quickly will generate stiff resistance. I hope he doesn't let this drop off the radar though.

JPM said...

Well, it is relatively sparse for a government with its first proper majority.

As I say, typically, thirty to sixty Acts are passed in a year, with more in a government's first one.

And yes, some of these are one-liners, others magnificent cathedrals, like the Land Registration Act 2002.

There is no Standard Legislative Unit, and so claims about percentages of law are pretty idiotic anyway.

Terence patrick hewett said...

Ho Ho Ho Mr Scrooge.

John in Cheshire said...

Have I missed the boundary changes bill?
And the reduction in the number of MPs?
No privatisation of the racist far-left bbc?
I fully support Mrs Proudie's thoughts on hate crime legislation - it should all be repealed. And the Equalities and Human Rights Commission should be abolished.
If the police are allowed to carry Tasers, then so should we. After all if they would help in a situation, it's more than likely members of the public will be on the scene long before the police turn up.

Terence patrick hewett said...

Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? Ho Ho Ho Mr Scrooge.

Anonymous said...

+1 Mrs. Proudie and Dave G.
A 'Great Repeal Act' to reverse all the pernicious encroachment of personal freedoms.

Terence patrick hewett said...

The government is going to reactivate the Treason Act: there will not be enough gaols to hold them all.

Span Ows said...

Forgot to mention earlier, surely "hurricane", not typhoon: this is the 'western hemisphere'

Terence patrick hewett said...

@Span
It is a metaphor: expect a tsunami of protest.

Sackerson said...

@JPM: "hundreds of Statutory Instruments" - how many of them nodding through EU legislation, since this is largely how it works?

APL said...

"Online Harms Bill"

Ah, online harms.

Yes, typical of SW1. Legalisation against a thing, is one thing, getting police to arrest child rape gangs which are actually causing on street harms, not such a priority.

F*****s

JPM said...

Check for yourself, Sackerson:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga

Sackerson said...

@JPM - Since you made the claim I'd have thought you could have told me, but I have looked briefly at your link.

However this might be a more useful link:

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/parliamentary-monitor-2019-snapshot/secondary-legislation

and thus one ('An estimated 13% of Acts and Statutory Instruments have an EU influence, whereas that rises to 62% when EU regulations are included in addition to Acts and Statutory Instruments'):

https://fullfact.org/europe/uk-law-what-proportion-influenced-eu/