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Law Matters
Government rebuffed
In a rebuff to the government, the Joint Committee on the draft Deregulation Bill has said that a proposal in the Bill to allow ministers to scrap legislation that, in their personal opinion, is “no longer of practical use”, is “too wide”, and that the safeguards against constitutional abuse of the power by ministers are inadequate.
The purpose of the power, as explained by Conservative MP Kenneth Clarke, was to provide ministers of the day with “a quick and tidy dustbin into which we can take clutter out of the statute book and get rid of it”. The phrase of “no practical use” was not defined in the Bill.