Too Big to Succeed; Too Important to Fail
The Government's proposed 'Great Repeal Bill' is urgently needed, but will its own ambition be its downfall?
From stamping down on public protests, to stifling freedom of speech, the last government demonstrated that Civil Liberties were not at the top of its agenda. In the wake of 9/11 and the war on terror, 'security' has been the byword of government policy whilst the very values and attitudes they were supposed to protect were slowly stripped from the country. Public demonstrations within a kilometre of Parliament were prohibited, suspects held under the nebulous 'terrorism' acts can be held for almost a month entirely without charge, and criticism of religion can be construed as a 'hate crime.'
At the same time, some critics have seen the red tape of bureaucracy coil and intertwine itself around businesses. Measures brought in supposedly to protect the rights of workers were accused of 'strangling' the market by the the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties.
Within weeks of the new Coalition government piecing itself together, Nick Clegg announced a new policy with the aim of slicing through unwanted bills and rolling back the tide against liberty. It was announced unabashedly as the 'Great Repeal Bill' and it was claimed that it would be an unprecedented experiment in direct democracy by giving the British people the chance to suggest and debate which bills should face the cuts.
The British people certainly haven't shied away from the experiment, since the open-source page [ www.wikiversity.org/wiki/Great_Repeal_Bill ] went live there have been calls for more than 130 acts to be abolished, some of them in their entirety and others to be amended or rewritten. In addition, more than a dozen Quangos have been targeted by the contributors. It is in these sheer numbers that lies the first problem Nick Clegg faces if he is ever to try and have this revolutionary bill enacted; how to decide which of the wildly disparate requests he is to present to parliament.
Many, if not all of these suggestions still provoke fierce argument and debate and were only passed in the first place by narrow margins, such as the ban on fox hunting or the laws concerning prostitution. If the bill were to be introduced as one piece of legislature, no MP could possibly support or oppose every article and clause, dooming it to drown under a wave of argument and frayed tempers. On the other hand, introducing hundreds of deeply controversial bills individually would tie up far too much of parliament's time to even be considered.
This is ultimately the problem of putting such a wide-ranging piece of legislation directly into the hands of the online community; there is no focus on any one area of legislation or even any time-scale for consideration. Instead of a bill aiming to undo attacks to freedom of speech over the last thirty years or freeing business from red tape and bureaucracy, we currently have a bill being proposed covering everything from the royal marriage laws (enacted in 1772) through to terrorism and copyright laws in the context of cyber-publishing!
Proponents of the Great Repeal Bill need to decide what the focus of the bill should be; will it concentrate on the importance of civil liberties? On state influence in market forces? Control over charitable activities? When that is decided then which are the highest priorities for reform? Once these questions have been answered and the most appropriate laws have been selected for the cut then perhaps we will be left with perhaps three or four main bills which can be introduced to parliament.
If the government is serious about introducing this bill in any form whatsoever then it needs a strong hand to hone and sharpen it to make a much-needed difference before the opportunity is lost for a generation.