Memorandum by Bevan Brittan LLP
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 This submission is made on behalf of
Bevan Brittan LLP, a national law firm that delivers commercially
astute legal advice to clients in three markets: Major Corporates,
Health, and Communities and Local Government.
1.2 I am a Professional Support Lawyer in Bevan
Brittan's Commercial Department. I am a qualified solicitor and
I also hold a qualification in library and information studies.
I have many years' experience in legal information and knowledge
management work, and have worked for both commercial law firms
and legal publishers.
1.3 I am part of the Public Sector Commercial
team that acts for a large number of local authorities, health
bodies and other public sector organisations. My role involves
providing the team with a comprehensive and focused information
and research service. I produce several email alerts, including
the highly regarded fortnightly Authority Update that is sent
to over 500 people in local authorities and associated public
bodies.
1.4 In particular, I keep a watching brief
for developments that impact on the team's work. This includes
tracking the progress through Parliament of new legislation that
will affect our clients' business. I also carry out ad hoc research
on policy and legislation. It is essential that our advice to
clients is timely and accurate, so I need to be able to access
the latest information on legislative developments quickly and
easily.
1.5 I am therefore very interested in the
provision of information about Bills online and ways in which
I can track developments more efficiently and effectively. In
general, when using the parliamentary website for information
on Bills, I know what I'm looking for so the following comments
and suggestions are made on that basis.
2. BILLS BEFORE
PARLIAMENT WEB
PAGE
2.1 I find the Bills before Parliament web
page (http://services.parliament.uk/bills/)
extremely useful for tracking the progress of Bills. The new web
page is a great improvement, particularly the timeline with links
through to the relevant debates and committee proceedings in Hansard
and to relevant documents such as House of Commons Library research
papers.
2.2 It would be useful if the web page could
also link through to the relevant Government Department's web
page on each Bill, so giving easy access to the policy papers
and consultations that lead up to the new legislation. There needs
to be more joined up working between the departmental websites
and the Parliament website.
2.3 One major issue is how Hansard
is published online. Proceedings are often spread over a number
of html web pages which makes it extremely difficult to find the
relevant parts of Hansard for discussions on particular
clauses of a Bill, even with the link from the Bills page. For
example, the Committee proceedings usually take several weeks
but it is not possible to see which clauses were debated on which
day without opening each Hansard link and scrolling down
through each page. As each session can often be spread over a
number of pages, it is very time consuming to find the relevant
section.
2.4 It would be easier if Hansard
were in a different format, eg pdf, so that one could search the
proceedings. Even better would be a clause by clause index, or
if the Hansard debates were linked from the text of the
Bill (see below, para 5.2). In addition, there should be a search
facility for the whole of Hansard that enables one to search
by date, type of proceedings, name of Bill, keywords, phrases,
etc—at present, I often have to use Google to find relevant
debates. This is completely contrary to the advice I give our
trainees on how to find legal information, when I caution that
Google should be the last resort!
3. EXPLANATORY
NOTES
3.1 The Explanatory Notes are usually the
first place I go to when trying to establish the scope and purpose
of new legislation. The current trial of new formats being carried
out with the Equality Bill is an interesting development and has
great potential, but of the three formats being trialled, I find
that only the interwoven version is at all useful.
3.2 Interleaving the Explanatory Notes with the
text of the Bill would better if the Explanatory Notes came after
the Bill text rather than before, and if they could be broken
down into sub-clauses for long clauses. I envisage this as a link
next to or after the clause which opens up the Notes for that
clause, and which could be switched on or off for each clause
or for the whole document.
3.3 If the Notes are interleaved, then their
numbering needs to be altered so that it matches each clause.
The design and content of the Notes need to be re-thought so that
their structure is more suited for online publication. Also, thought
needs to be given to how they are printed out, so that the Bill
is easily to read both online and when printed off.
3.4 The Explanatory Notes will need to be
updated with each new version of the Bill, so that they include
all agreed amendments.
3.5 It is still useful to have the Notes
as one whole document, so there should be the option to download
all the Notes for a Bill in pdf format.
4. TEXT OF
BILLS
4.1 There are two issues regarding amendments
to legislation: the effect of proposed new legislation on existing
legislation, and how the text of a Bill is amended as it progresses
through Parliament. This section discusses the first point; the
second point is dealt with in para.5 below.
4.2 Many Bills are drafted so that their provisions
amend existing legislation. Often the new provisions will change
or insert just a few words or a sub-clause into an existing Act.
This makes it very difficult to establish the effect of the Bill
and get an overview of the new provisions.
4.3 I agree with Lord Norton's comments
on this point that are noted in his memorandum (http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/ppLordNorton.doc),
and also his views presented to the Committee at their meeting
on 6 May 2009. It would be very useful to have some sort of schedule
showing the original legislation and how an amendment changes
it, or a link through from the Bill to the original legislation.
4.4 Where the original legislation has itself
been amended a number of times before, any such link would need
to be to the latest version of that legislation. The Statute Law
Database could be used for this, although it would mean bringing
it fully up to date—at present it only includes amendments
made up to 2002.
5. AMENDMENTS
TO BILLS
5.1 I agree with all of Lord Norton's comments
on how it is a laborious exercise to see and work out the effect
of amendments that have been tabled. I have great difficulty in
understanding the marshalled lists of amendments. It would be
very helpful if each amendment were linked to its appropriate
clause.
5.2 I would like to see a link from the clause
and the proposed amendment to the Hansard debates and proceedings,
and a note of whether the amendment was agreed or not. For more
comments on Hansard, see my comments above, paras 2.3 and 2.4.
5.3 Once an amendment has been agreed, then
the text of the Bill should be updated to show this. A decision
would need to be made whether rejected amendments are still retained
and how they are displayed—I am not usually concerned with
this in my work as our clients want to know what they have to
implement or comply with, rather than what the options were, but
a lobbying group may well have different views on the ability
to see what suggested amendments have been rejected and why.
5.4 I agree with other submissions that
it would be helpful to be able to look back on how a Bill has
been amended as it moves through Parliament, and see who initiated
and supported each amendment.
5.5 It should also be possible to track
historical information on Parliamentary pre-legislative scrutiny.
The Historic Hansard Prototype (http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/)
is a good step in this direction.
6. OTHER SUGGESTIONS
6.1 I agree with the suggestion that it
should be possible to set up an alert so that people are notified
about particular parts of Bills relevant to their interests—either
about the introduction of new legislation in their area of interest,
or about changes to Bills.
6.2 I understand that some suggestions have been
made about making draft legislation available online for the public
to annotate, a sort of "wiki-bill". I am not so sure
abut the benefit of this—it could be a dangerous and pointless
exercise. "Annotation" to me implies changing the wording
of the draft legislation, but parliamentary drafting is a skill
and needs to be undertaken by experienced draftsmen who understand
the effects of what they're changing. If "annotation"
really means commenting on proposals, then a blog or discussion
board could be set up for each Bill, but this would need to be
closely monitored so that it doesn't become a platform for campaigners.
If the public is concerned about proposed legislation, then they
should use the existing channels, such as their MP. It would also
be more useful to be able to comment online on proposals at the
consultation stage.
6.3 All these suggestions for linking and
updating parliamentary data raise resourcing issues. I have worked
in legal publishing and know how labour-intensive it is to keep
an information database accurate and up to date. Online publishers
such as LexisNexis and Westlaw charge large subscriptions for
their legislation databases, so there are major costs implications
in setting up and, more importantly, maintaining a workable and
useful parliamentary information resource—if people find
that an online service is out of date or difficult to navigate
then they won't use it.
6.4 Consideration also needs to be given
to how the data is archived, eg will rejected amendments be maintained,
how one searches for archived material, and how to display the
status of historic information retrieved via a search. There is
the danger that people might simply use Google, which might bring
up superseded versions of a Bill.
Claire Booth
10 June 2009
| 
