There’s a wide corridor that wraps around Parliament's debating chamber. These corridors are the 'lobbies'. There’s two of them really, the Ayes Lobby is the corridor that traverses the half the House behind the Government, the Noyes Lobby is the opposition half.
These lobbies are lined from floor to ceiling with heavy tomes. Volumes of legislation dominate one side and Hansard (the record of debates) the other.
They don’t get read a lot. Both legislation and Hansard are online (and searchable) these days; so there’s a slightly crusty, dusty, abandoned feel about the paper versions.
Early Hansard volumes Photo: © VNP / Phil Smith
Sometimes the contents are as dusty and dated as the books themselves. Legal drafting is dry to start with but give it a few decades to steep and it can get downright archaic.
Some laws get amended with the regular pendulum of governments and so stay fresh. Others get updated with shifting morays. But some laws just sit collecting dust and anachronism until you could swear they were enacted by King John’s Barons.
The laws may be regularly used and referred to, but haven't been amended and so remain in slightly 'yee olde' language.
Luckily Parliament has rules to encourage a lick of rapid spring cleaning. The tactic is a revision bill.
If you identify a particular crusty law that could do with a rewrite but you don’t have a yearning to change the intent of the law you can task the PCO with a revision. (It's the Parliamentary Counsel Office who do the hard yards of drafting laws).
The Attorney-General keeps a list of three years worth of dusting and updating; a work duration to make domestic chores seem less arduous.
The fastest duster in the west
Revision bills (rewritten but without policy changes) get a super expedited dash through the Parliamentary Process. It goes like this:
- First Reading - no debate,
- Select Committee consideration (normal),
- Second reading - normal debate over whether to adopt select committee suggestions,
- Committee stage - Skip this bit entirely,
- Third reading - no debate.
And you’re done!
Some committee time and two hours or less in the House. In Parliamentary terms, that's lightning quick.
With that speed there is no need to worry that revision bills are using up time that could be spent debating more urgent government business.
This week there is an example of exactly this. The Partnership Law Bill will get its only debate on Thursday. It was only introduced in June and it’s nearly done.
...and just in time for some spring cleaning.
