BUSINESS AND COMPANY LAW

Business and Company Law

Business and Company Law

PART A:

(a) Distinguish between Acts of Parliament as primary legislation in the UK and the various types of secondary legislation.

Parliament is the legislative body of England and Wales. Although there is a degree of independence between the legislative, executive (being the government) and judiciary, Parliament tends to be dominated by the executive. Acts of Parliament are known as primary legislation. There are Public Acts that affect the whole population or a whole class of the population and Private Acts, which are promoted by organisations outside Parliament such as local authorities or companies (Elliott, 2011, 620-670).

Secondary legislation often referred to as statutory instrument or delegated legislation is a form of UK legislation created by a body authorised by Parliament - such as a Government Minister - to legislate in delegated areas. Parliament does this to permit government business to advance easily; however the strategy is unmistakably a hazardous one (Wolf, 2012). For the most part, a lawmaking body makes standards for the presentation of secondary legislation before the House inside a specified period and may oblige examination of all such instruments by a council within the House. Where this is not needed, and if thus, society feels that the official has gone past its remit, it is not difficult to see that an expansive number of provisions for writs in the courts may come about because of displeased citizens. Hence, statutory instruments can also include Codes of Practice, Regulations, Orders, Bylaws or Rules (John & Bevan, 2012, 89-108).

(b) What controls are exercised over delegated legislation in the UK?

The Government of United Kingdom gives great importance in developing the parliamentary process. Therefore, a number of reforms have been brought in to make the parliament more efficient. Many of these reforms came through ever since the establishment of the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons in 1997. Due to the high number of issues with the Parliament's scrutiny of the secondary legislation, some proposals were made (Elliott, 2011, 620-670).

The proposal made was the legislative Select Committees should study the SIs in their department in advanced before being shown to the Parliament and then address on difficulties of specific community importance. By recognizing matters that require additional justification, such pre-legislative analysis would lessen the hefty workload of the Joint Community of Statutory Instruments (JCSI). Another major reform made was the establishment of Law Commissions. The Law Commissions Act 1965 established the Law Commission as the statutory self-governing organisation to propose reform when it was required and to keep the law under constant review. The Commission's goal is to ensure that the law is rational, up-to-date and straightforward (Elliott, 2011, 620-670).

Many people view that the existing parliamentary procedures for scrutinising delegated legislation are insufficient. Once again, the function of delegated legislation permits the executive to create or amend the law without having to go over the intricate parliamentary process required for primary ...