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from the returning-sovereignty-to-parliament dept.
A controversial motion that will grant the government the power to force through Brexit legislation has been passed.
[...] It means the Conservatives, despite not winning a majority at the general election, will take control of a powerful Commons committee, and grant themselves the power to force through legislation without it being voted on or debated in parliament.
With parliament needing to change, amend or import wholesale thousands of laws and regulation to prepare the UK for its exit from the European Union, the EU Withdrawal Bill has been designed to allow for new laws and regulations to be passed via controversial legislative device called a statutory instrument, which are debated in tiny standing committees.
But the government has now voted to give itself a majority on the little known Committee of Selection, which decides the make up of those committees, and in so doing has seized control of the whole process.
[...] Liberal Democrat Chief Whip Alistair Carmichael commented: "This is a sinister power grab by an increasingly authoritarian Prime Minister.
"The Tories didn't win a majority at the election, but are now hijacking Parliament to try and impose their extreme Brexit on the country.
"It is a bitter irony that Brexiteers who spent their careers championing parliamentary sovereignty have now chosen to sell it down the river.
Source: The Independent
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Wednesday September 13 2017, @10:48AM (6 children)
Note that statutory instruments are a standard way of doing business in UK parliament. The opposition are making out that this is something new and bad but it is just business as usual.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday September 13 2017, @01:15PM (3 children)
To agree with and extend the remarks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_instrument#United_States [wikipedia.org]
The best USA analogy would be the FCC lives in title 47 of the CFR and imagine we voted to change the name of the country to "Trumpville" and a Democrat started complaining for the sake of obtaining press coverage, that the FCC was updating title 47 without congressional approval as they ran a regex on the entire corpus of regulation, something like "s/USA/Trumpville/g"
The story means much less than it would initially appear. You can tell that's the case in that almost all the official quotes in the article are merely sour grapes complaints about history not going their way. A good USA analogy would be our tired imaginary Russian Manchurian Candidate news propaganda over the last year.
(Score: 5, Informative) by n1 on Wednesday September 13 2017, @05:04PM (2 children)
In context... The UK gov called an election, an election they said they were not going to call... Along with months of basically refusing to talk about any policy they had, except 'will of the people' in regard to the referendum... They lost their majority and mandate to govern, and are now continuing to refuse to talk about their policies or plans except in the vaguest of terms. Then took steps as seen here to undermine 'returning sovereignty to parliament' because it would take too long and require them to actually have a plan.
The referendum question was: Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?
This does not mention anything about: European Economic Area, European Court of Human Rights, Council of Europe as some examples.
To engage in hyperbole for a moment... 'Should the United Kingdom Bring Back the Death Penalty?' .... Yes.
Ok, well the question was answered and the will of the people says the death penalty is needed, nowhere does it say it's only for murder. So to follow the will of the people, the death penalty should be applied to all criminals, shoplifters, illegal parking of your car, failing to pay council tax. We don't need to debate or consider the nuances and ramifications of this, we had a referendum.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday September 14 2017, @09:30AM (1 child)
Yes, but if the government pushed such a ridiculous policy, then I highly suspect the opposition would propose a bill to overturn it. It is highly likely that this bill would pass through parliament and become law.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday September 14 2017, @01:31PM
On this side of the pond we have that strategy down to a fine are, push some kind of knowingly unconstitutional act "mandatory teacher led Christian prayer in schools" or something, then the supreme court gets good boy points for striking it down and the pressure group that likes it gets good boy points for having tried really really hard although failing. Everyone "wins". Sometimes something good sticks around for awhile. Political stochastic annealing, kinda. Not necessarily bad, although mostly bad.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Wednesday September 13 2017, @01:28PM (1 child)
Actually they are a standard way of _not_ doing business in UK parliament, delegating business the MPs can't be bothered to do out to some committee or other (or ministers) :-)
What the opposition are keen not to point out is that without this bill, huge swathes of UK laws will simply cease to exist when the Article 50 clock runs out.
I think the Tories should have presented two options - (1) where there is a timetable for parliament to debate and pass all the necessary laws to patch the gap, which will probably require MPs to work 70+hr weeks for 50+ weeks of the year (and that probably wouldn't be enough), and (2) where some of the required legislation is delegated out. I think I know which option would succeed then...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Wednesday September 13 2017, @01:46PM
Well,
* passing a bill requires a boolean (either the law is passed or the law is not passed) so you can't really "present two options".
* letting MPs make such a choice runs the risk that the opposition vote for the impractical solution to poison the Tory brexit, and then blame the government for cocking it up.