The Influences of Law Making on Parliament and Statute Creation

The Influences of Law Making on Parliament and Statute Creation

One influence operating on Parliament is that of the Law Commission.

The Law commission is a full-time permanent publicly funded body,

which was set up by the Law Commissions Act 1965. It was established

to reform law. There are five Commissioners, they are full time and

one is a High Court judge who chairs the proceedings. The other four

are solicitors, barristers, academic lawyers, which allows a full

range of views on the issues of the law. The commissioners are

appointed for a five-year term expect the chair whose term lasts only

three years. The Law Commission can be requested by the Lord

Chancellor to consider an area of law in need of reform, or it can

select a range of projects after consulting representatives of

academic lawyers, the Bar and the Law Society. After the projects to

be looked at have been decided the Law Commission puts together a

programme of these projects. Every four to five years a new programme

is produced and published. The Law Commission looks at a range of

criteria before accepting projects. These criteria are the importance

of the issues, availability of resources, and the suitability of the

issues to be dealt with. Every year the Law Commission gets a budget

of around £4million. This money is also part of the considerations

when looking at projects to accept. The way in which the Law

Commission looks at each project follows a similar pattern. Firstly

research is done to look at the existing law; a consultation paper is

then published including the recommendations for change. The Law

Commission invites interested parties to respond to this paper and

then prepares its reports. If a change to the law is decided on then a

draft Bill is attached to this report. Some examples of recent

projects undertaken by the Law Commission include gene therapy, data

protection, fraud and stalking. The Law Commission makes good accounts

of the law suggesting changes and putting froward arguments for

change. The reforms are considered by a body of experts linked with