The Greater Manchester lockdown was announced on Thursday evening 30 July with a suggestion that new laws were incoming. It is now Monday morning 3 August and as yet no new laws have been published.
gov.uk/guidance/north…
gov.uk/guidance/north…
This has been discussed less than it should, but since lockdown began in late March, Government has repeatedly (around 12 times so far) used emergency powers to pass lockdown laws, national and local, which have come into force the same time or hours after they are made.
Whilst it was probably justifiable to use emergency powers in March, since then the government has used emergency powers without discrimination, completely sidelining parliament (because they don't need to approve the laws until at least 28 days until after they are made)...
... and giving a huge amount of power, probably unprecedented, to the minister's pen which can at a stroke (literally) create vast new criminal laws which interfere with the daily lives, right to protest, family rights, religious observance of millions of people.
Now I am not saying that coronavirus laws should be slowed down to make them useless (they need to be quick to e.g. contain local outbreaks) but there must be a better system available than allowing ministers to simply magic new criminal laws into existence with no warning.
Even some sort of accelerated scrutiny procedure would be better than this, where we wait for a ministerial pronouncement of what our new laws are to be - which is surely inappropriate for an advanced democracy, even one in the midst of a public health crisis.
Many liberals in UK look in horror at the US where President Trump uses executive orders to fulfil whatever crazy urge he has from day to day, but we also know that Congress can check his power. Here the Executive (i.e. the PM and Cabinet) have that power but at present unchecked
And, meanwhile, the government has just announced an "independent panel" to look at judicial review, the means by which a citizen can challenge a decision of the executive in court - this is not an independent panel, it is led by a former Tory minister... gov.uk/government/new…
... who has already expressed strong views about the judicial review of Prime Minister's decision to shut down parliament for weeks (prorogation) which was quashed by the Supreme Court and for which this 'independent panel' is a obvious act of retaliation policyexchange.org.uk/wp-content/upl…
Make no mistake, this 'independent panel' is an attempt to dismantle one of the important remaining checks and balances against executive power at a time when that executive power has been, for reasons explored above, hugely expanded. This should be fought tooth and nail.
The reason government has hived the judicial review changes off the 'constitutional review' promised in the Conservative manifesto is probably that people will be less interested in judicial review which few understand is a central part of our constitution. It's a clever ruse.
And the changes which will be proposed are likely to be technical sounding (such as changing the rules of 'standing' - who can bring a judicial review), time limits, fees - which will have the effect of making judicial review, already a costly and risky process, even harder.
I take no pleasure in saying that I predicted some of this in November in this lecture about why we need a written constitution anchor.fm/better-human/e…
I finish by saying I am not a cynic but a skeptic - I acted for pretty much every govt department when I used to do government work. There are many good ministers and civil servants. But we keep them honest through meaningful scrutiny. That's why our democracy works. For now.
