STATUTE LAW (REPEALS) BILL [H.L.] (Hansard, 24 January 1974)

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE)
My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. Your Lordships will remember that this is the fifth Bill produced by the two Law Commissions under their programme of Statute law revision, and I am quite sure the House will be grateful to both of them for their continuing work in this field. When I moved the Second Reading of the previous Bill in this series on February 6 last year, the noble and learned Lord. Lord Gardiner, expressed surprise that the Law Commissions' previous Bills had not exhausted the possibilities of clearing spent and obsolete matter from the Statute Book. Perhaps the noble and learned Lord will be even more surprised to find yet another Bill brought before the House so soon, and more surprised again to know there are further Bills still to come.
My Lords, the present Bill provides for the repeal of 55 whole Acts and 331 parts of Acts which are no longer of practical utility. If it becomes law as drafted, 1581 it will bring our grand total of Statutes affected by the whole series to 1,083, made up of 370 whole Acts and 713 parts of Acts. I am sure your Lordships will agree that this is an extraordinary total, and, as I have said, it is not the end of the story.
My Lords, your Lordships will see that in the present Bill there are 12 categories of enactments proposed for repeal. These relate respectively to security required from public officers, obsolete taxes, other financial enactments, land acquisition powers, legal proceedings and the legal profession, enactments relating solely to Scotland, transport, ecclesiastical enactments, the improvement of land, the Board of Trade, the category known as "Miscellaneous", and spent repealing enactments. I do not think there is anything in the details of the Bill to which I ought to draw your Lordships' attention particularly in rising to move the Second Reading. Noble Lords will find a detailed explanation of the provisions in the Fifth Report of the Law Commissions, Command Paper 5493. I have been provided, as usual, with extensive notes on the Bill prepared by them, and perhaps I may be able, with luck, to answer any questions put to me about the multifarious provisions, if any of your Lordships are diligent enough to find any of interest. I beg to move.

§ LORD GARDINER
My Lords, we warmly welcome the Second Reading of this Bill. I should like to join in the tribute made by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to the Law Commissions for the value of their work in this sphere. It is indeed a striking performance, and I continue to be surprised that they can go on, year after year, finding further Acts to be repealed. I would work out the total myself but the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor stated a figure of some 370 Acts repealed altogether and 713 in part. That means the Law Commissions have specifically examined nearly one-third of all the Acts on the Statute Book. No doubt they have also examined many others as to which they propose no repeal, but it seems to me that sooner or later this process must be likely to draw to a conclusion.
1582 My Lords, while I do not wish to ask the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor any questions on the actual Acts contained in this Bill, I should just like to put these two questions; if he cannot give us the answer to-day, perhaps he will kindly let me know at his convenience. The first question is whether the Government or the Law Commissions do envisage this process being substantially completed, and if so, how near are we to completion? The second question relates to a fact which I think I have mentioned before, that shortly after leaving Office I inquired how many Public General Acts there had been on the Statute Book when I took Office, and how many there were then. I know when I took Office there were about 3,600, and I had looked to see that in nearly six years we had passed an average of 75 further Acts a year, so the total looked rather like 4,100. I was naturally gratified to be told that there were then 150 fewer Acts of Parliament on the Statute Book than when I took Office. This is entirely due not only to the Law Commissions' Statute Law (Repeals) Bills, but also to their Consolidation Bills. We are, I think, within measureable distance of having a practical and effective Statute Book, which we certainly had not in the past. I warmly support the Second Reading of this Bill.

LORD JANNER
My Lords, may I add a word or two, endorsing the remarks passed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner. From a practitioner's point of view, this matter is very important. The amount of work that has been done by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor and by the Law Commissions is of considerable value. I remember that some years ago I was examining a number of cases relating to hackney carriages. There were many anomalies in the law: as for example, the then, and I believe still existing, provision that every hackney carriage had to carry a bundle of hay—this, of course, included taxis and other vehicles—and that people could only urinate on one side of the carriage. There are a very large number of similar provisions which have become obsolete in a large number of Acts. Secondly, from the point of view of those of us who have actually to deal with the Acts in our daily life, the way in which 1583 this matter is being handled is of considerable value. I hope it will continue to be handled in this way till all such Acts are removed from the Statute Book, although it is not easy to find out how many there are, because it involves a considerable amount of research.

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
My Lords, I should like to thank both the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, and the noble Lord, Lord Janner, for their brief remarks. I quite agree with the noble Lord, Lord Janner, that this process is of value to the practitioner and other people who wish to find out what the law is at any given moment of time. I am grateful to both noble Lords for their expression of appreciation, which I think is widely shared, of the value of the work done by the two Law Commissions.
My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, has asked me two hard questions. The first was, in effect, for how long is this going on? I personally do not think the Government, as he courteously put it, have an official position on this at all, and I doubt whether the Law Commissions have; I have not asked them. But I have a private opinion, which is that it will be a continuous process. May I give the noble and learned Lord my reason for saying so? If he will look in the Schedule to this Act, there are no fewer than 16 repeals in the Schedule relating to 1966 alone. In the earlier part of the process one was cleaning up bits and pieces from the mediaeval Statutes, which was interesting archeologically and gave rise occasionally to funny observations when the Bills came before the House. I think we shall go on doing this; we shall not stop doing it, because there is a continuous tendency for obsolete matter and lumber to be accumulated as Parliament continues with its business.
I think that the question of Statute law revision and the process of law reform generally is better viewed as a continuous process, as part of the housekeeping of Parliament when it is dealing with its own enactments, and when dealing with rules of law which may have outlived their usefulness or produced deleterious results. So that my own personal view in answer to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, is that this is part of a continuous 1584 process. It may be that as we catch up with arrears there will be fewer of these Bills, and indeed I rather hope that there will. I should imagine that the process will go on, and ought to go on, indefinitely.
As regards the actual figure for Acts now on the Statute Book, I think I must ask the noble and learned Lord to allow me to take notice of that question. I will let him know the answer privately, and if he desires a publication of the figure he can put down a Written Question when he knows the result.