§ 3.14 p.m.
§ Lord RENTONMy Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
§ The Question was as follows:
§ To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will now request Parliamentary Counsel to act upon Recommendations (13) and (15), dealing with statements of principle and of purpose respectively, of the report of the Committee on The Preparation of Legislation (Cmnd. 6053), with a view to better expressing the intentions of Parliament and the better understanding of statutes.
§ The LORD CHANCELLORMy Lords, Parliamentary Counsel are well aware of these recommendations, and, subject to drafting instructions by responsible Ministers, will act on them.
§ Lord RENTONMy Lords, may I thank my noble and learned friend for that very encouraging and satisfactory reply.
§ Lord HARMAR-NICHOLLSMy Lords, does not this Question and the Answer confirm the impression that some have, that we are either having too much legislation or there are too few draftsmen to deal with it? Will that be kept in mind and perhaps something done about it?
§ The LORD CHANCELLORMy Lords, I cannot resist reminding my noble friend of the words of Edward Gibbon, who was faced perhaps in his time with problems not dissimilar to these. He said:
The experience of an abuse from which our own age and country are not perfectly exempt may sometimes provoke a generous indignation, and extort the hasty wish of exchanging our elaborate jurisprudence for the simple and summary decrees of a Turkish cadhi. Our calmer reflection will suggest that such forms and delays are necessary to guard the person and the property of the citizen; that the discretion of the judge is the first engine of tyranny; and that the laws of a free people should foresee and determine every question that may probably arise in the exercise of power and the transactions of industry. But the government of Justinian united the evils of liberty and servitude, and the Romans were oppressed at the same time by the multiplicity of their laws and the arbitrary will of their master".
§ Lord ELWYN-JONESMy Lords, while thanking the noble and learned Lord for that admirable dissertation, may I ask him whether it was before or after Edward Gibbon wrote Decline and Fall? My Lords, in spite of the noble and learned Lord's acceptance of the purport of the Question, may I ask whether, if reliance is placed in Acts of Parliament on statements of purpose, there may not be a temptation, as indeed was said by First Parliamentary Counsel in his evidence to the Renton Committee, to call for something which is no more than a manifesto and which may obscure what is otherwise precise and exact?
§ The LORD CHANCELLORMy Lords, the same view was expressed even more succinctly by our joint predecessor, Lord Bacon, who said:
Quantum fieri potest tamen, prologi evitentur, et lex incipiat a jussione".
§ Lord BYERSMy Lords, may I ask the noble and learned Lord how he obtained the intelligence that these two supplementary questions were going to be asked?
§ The LORD CHANCELLORMy Lords, I just guessed.
§ Lord ELWYN-JONESMy Lords, may I respond to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor in this vernacular, "Diolch", and refer him to the laws of Howell DDA.
§ Lord RENTONMy Lords, is my noble and learned friend aware that the more the detail that has to be written into a Bill the more desirable it is to define the purpose underlying that detail so that it may be better understood?
§ The LORD CHANCELLORYes, my Lords; but this would give rise, of course, to the same dispute as we had the other day. The thing will ultimately depend upon our laws of interpretation. The literalists have won what is virtually a complete triumph, and the purposivists have been in retreat for 300 years.