The Draft Constitutional Renewal Bill

Spyblog and Mr E have pretty much said what needs to be said about the spawn of the original concept of the Regulatory and Reform Act 2006, otherwise known under the moniker “abolition of parliament”; that is, the facility built into the bill that would enable any minister or ministers to pretty much make law on the hoof without recourse to parliament. That this is reprehensible and a provision of power to the executive that it should never have, is obvious.

However, a commenter at Spyblog draws my attention to Jack Straw’s statement to the house. In it, when outlining the contents of the bill, he says:

The draft Bill is in five parts.

Yet one has only to look at page 8 of the contents of the bill to realise that there are six parts – and it is part six that contains the sting in the tail. Nowhere does Straw mention the provisions of part six in his statement to the house.

There are two possibilities here. Either Straw made a genuine error of omission or it was a deliberate attempt to obfuscate so that lazy MPs not bothering to read the bill themselves, effectively vote away what little powers they have after surrendering the rest to Brussels.

Now, my humanitarian instincts would always be inclined to the former explanation. However, over a decade of experience with this particularly unpleasant administration draws me inexorably to the latter conclusion. It is a conclusion that I will remain with until I see verifiable evidence to the contrary.

Some of the comments on Spyblog suggest that this is a pretty standard codicil to a bill – however, the wording is too loose by half. One is hopeful that the committe scruitinising it does the decent thing and strangles it at birth.

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Update: Justin offers some analysis of this:

The second view, which I’m more inclined to take at this moment in time, is that these things are like backdoors in computer systems. I think they’re a tacit admission by the government that they’ve been experts at passing spectacularly bad laws over the last 11 years. And so, they’ve learned the trick of the self-amending law. If something goes wrong, they can sneak in the back and tinker with the law until it’s running a little more smoothly. It does away with all the hassle of having to admit that they’ve cocked up.

I wonder if all of this isn’t anything more sinister than New Labour knowing they’re, well, a bit crap, and are fed up with it being pointed out all the time.

Y’know, I think he may be right.