Delegated Legislation 12 Marker

Allows other to make law.

Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 - enabled the Minister of Work and Pensions to make regulations in all types of workplaces.

Parliament can concentrate on other matters and legislation keeps up with advances in society.

COUNTER - unelected people are making the law, so not democratic and representative of society.

SI are made by unelected civil servants who help the minister.

SI passed in 2012 by the Minister of Justice - restricting rights of immigrants to get legal aid, was challenged in courts and decided that SI had been ultra vires and not representative of public opinion.

Laws may not represent what the public wants.

COUNTER - impossible for Parliament to make laws about everything.

Specific Government departments and ministers make rules for their area.

PACE 1984 - Minister of Justice set the police Codes of Practice using his understanding.

Rules may have to be complex and require specialist knowledge.

COUNTER - Act might be confusing to apply, making law hard to interpret and not effective.

Long and complicated and requires judges to interpret.

R(Rogers) v Swindon NHS Trust - technical rules and specific drugs, and the court decided what was ‘exceptional’ in relation to medical needs.

Hard for public to understand DL and unclear how they should apply.

COUNTER - SI are created by people with specialist knowledge.

Local councils make by-laws and can assess particular needs of the locality and respond by making laws to deal with specific issues.

Local councils can pass a by-law making an area an alcohol free zone if there has been a problem with excessive drinking.

Law can be made by people who know the local area well and have an understanding of how best to solve problems.

COUNTER - thousands of by-laws every year with very little publicity.

Over 3000 SIs and several thousand by-laws made each year.

The British Airports Authority passed a by-law stopping passengers from taking tennis racquets on planes. The passenger was fined, even though he did not know.

Impossible for the average person to be aware of all these laws and makes people unaware of what is legal and illegal.

COUNTER - local areas have their own by-laws which are tailored to be effective in a specific area.

Scrutiny committee checks SI for Parliament and courts can declare DL as ultra vires.

ATB v Aylesbury Mushrooms - procedure was not followed so court declared the DL as void.

Ensures the DL works in the way that Parliament intended.

COUNTER - scrutiny committee can only refer problems to Parliament and the courts do not allow many judicial review cases each year.

the scrutiny committee can only refer problems to Parliament and hope they decide to take action.

In 2018, nearly 3,600 reviews were requested, but only 184 cases went ahead and the Government lost 40% of these.

Quite a lot of bad DL is made and it is not being resolved properly.

COUNTER - courts are able to solve the problem in the cases they hear and a committee double checking the work for Parliament is beneficial.