The process of legislation is used when parliament decide to make a law and they use the stages of process of legislation. The process starts off with drafting and this is where the Green paper then the white paper is used. The next stage is the first reading, this is when there is a formal procedure where the name and the main aims of the bill are read out and there is typically no discussion. This then proceeds onto the Second reading, and this is where the main debate of the whole bill takes place. This debate will focus on the main principle of the bill instead of the smaller details of it. As the end of the debate is reached a vote will take place where there must be a majority vote for it to continue further. Once this stage has been completed the next stage is called the committee stage, where a detailed examination of each clause of the bill will take place. The detailed examination is carried out by between 16 to 50 MPs and these are called the standing committee. The next stage that takes place is the report stage and this is where the standing committee report back to the house on the amendments which were made. These amendments will be debated in the house and will be either accepted or rejected. The next stage is the Third reading, and this is where the final vote on the bill will be made, which means that it is highly to fail due to it being late in the process. If a bill was started in the House of Commons it would be passed onto the House of Lords where it then goes through the stages of First reading, Seconding reading, committee stage, report stage and the third reading. If there have been amendments made by the House of Lords, the bill will go back to the House of Commons for them to also consider the amendments that had been made. This stage is called the Consideration of Amendments. The final stage of the Process of legislation is the Royal assent, in this stage the Queen will formally give approval of the bill and it will then become an act of parliament.
A problem with the Queen only receiving a short title of the bill and not the whole bill is that she may be misinformed of what the title meant. As she only gets the title the who law may not be correct for the public and what she read may not be an accurate representation of what the bill is. However, this may be good because it can speed up the process of a bill being made.
Another negative is that between the stages of the House of Lords and Consideration of amendment as it the bill started at the house of commons it then goes to the HOL where they make amendments to it however it will then go back to the HoC for them to consider it. This would result in a large amount of time being used up but, it could result well due to a lot of time being spent on it allowing the work to be done accurately. For example, the UK Mass surveillance law that was rushed in 2015, which was then heavily criticised by many groups of people.
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However, there is different types of bills. The first bill is called the public bill, these bills involve the matter of the public policy which will affect either the whole country or a large part of the country. This is where most of the government’s bills are. An example of this would be the Coronars and Justice Act in 2009.
Another type of bill is the Private bills, this is where a small number of bills will affect a small number of people or even organisations. A real-life example of this type of bill would be the Whitehaven Harbour Act in 2007.
The next type of bill is the Private members bills. These bills can be sponsored by individual MPs. They will present them to parliament and then it will be debated, however only a few of these become actual laws. A private members bill that became an actual law is the Abortion Act in 1967, which allowed people to have abortion in England.
Then the final type of bill is the Hybrid bills which are a cross between both Public and Private bills. Hybrid bills are introduced by the Government. These types of bills are likely to affect a single organisation, person or place.
With Parliament there are influences on the decision making. When there is a general election, all political parties are advertising their ideas and what they want to do in the country. So, there will be many different influencers trying to build the power of the political parties. However, there are negative events which can influence the parliament, these things are events such as terror attacks. This would then cause the parliament to respond to these events by introducing laws to help prevent this from happening again.
The media can also have an influence on the parliament, and this is because it can have a strong public opinion and the government will have to give in to it. Sometimes there may even be a high-profile person who is also helping the opinion which can help grow the opinion. Examples of media that have influences on the parliament can be the TV, newspapers, radio and magazines with other many media types. A reason why media has a big impact on the influence of the parliament is because media is free, however the information being spread may be false as they want to create a large following.
Law commission was set up in 1965 under the Law Commission Act. This is an independent body which reviews parts of law in the need for a reform. The aim of the Law commission is to make sure that law is fair by making sure it is cost effective and simple. They do this by using conducting research in certain areas of the law, by doing this they can give recommendations to parliament if they believe there are improvements needed in parliament. The Lord Chancellor can refer topics on behalf on the government. A consultation paper which holds current laws, explanations of laws in other countries and problems will be published. This is where a final report is issued, and it will have a draft of a bill attached that will go to the parliament before.
When it comes to the Law Commission when they’re trying to make law fair, they consider all areas of law and not just the small issues. This is good because when they are dealing with the issues all the areas of law are researched by legal experts, so they will know what best. However, as each area of law is considered it is very time consuming for example when there is an offence against a person it can take 5 years for the government to issue a bill. Even though they are cost effective only two third of their proposals are enacted.
Pressure groups can have an influence on the parliament due to them gaining the attention of the general public and the government. However, there are different types of pressure groups. The first one I’m covering is the Sectional pressure groups these represent the views of a person or people. Then there is Cause pressure groups, these represent and promote causes such as green-peace. These influence the parliament because they can raise awareness from the public enabling the public to have a voice in the process of idea making. They can also get individual MPs to join in and have a voice that is heard inside the parliament, which can help end the problem quicker as they have more power than someone outside the parliament. However, pressure groups are not always positive for instance they can cause a disturbance in the public due to the protests and demonstrations, for example the EDL movement has a big impact on the public due their conflicting views that people may find harmful which may cause further unrest in the public. Also, pressure groups need a lot of funding to even raise awareness for a change to be made.
