Advantages and disadvantages of DL Flashcards
ADV: Saves Parliament time
-By allowing other bodies to make law, this frees up parliamentary time. Parliament has 650 MPs in H of C and therefore any Acts passed involve a lot of debate and consequently a lot of time
-E.G the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 enabled the Minister of Work and Pensions to make regulations through a statutory instrument relating to health and safety in all types of work places.
-Allows P to concentrate on other matters such as budgets and BREXIT and means that legislation keeps up with advances in society.
-However, this does mean that unelected people are making the law, and therefore DL may not be very democratic and representative of what society actually wants.
ADV: Can apply to local areas
-Enabling Local Councils to make by-laws, they can assess the particular needs of the locality and respond by making laws to deal with specific issues.
-E.G there may be a problem with excessive drinking and crime in certain parts of a town. A local council can pass a by-law making that area an alcohol free zone.
-This is good because the law can be made by people who know the local area well and will have an understanding of how best to solve problems – which Parliament may not be able to do themselves.
-However, this results in thousands of by-laws every year
with very little publicity, so people may not actually know what the laws in their area are, which is very problematic and not a very effective method of making law.
ADV: Can be made by those with specialist knowledge
-Statutory instruments allow specific Government departments and ministers to make rules for their area of speciality.
-E.G PACE 1984 allows the Minister of Justice to set the police Codes of Practice using his understanding of the criminal justice system.
-These rules may have to be complex and require specialist knowledge to understand, which these ministers and departments would have.
-However, this means that the Act might be written in very specialist language and be confusing to apply, making the law hard to interpret and not very effective.
ADV: There are numerous controls from Parliament and the courts
-The scrutiny committee check statutory instruments for Parliament, and courts can declare DL ultra vires in some situations.
-E.G when the correct procedure was not followed in ATB v Aylesbury Mushrooms so the courts declared the DL as void.
-This is positive because it ensures that DL works in the way that Parliament intended.
-However, the controls are not always effective because the scrutiny committee can only refer problems to Parliament and the courts do not allow many judicial review cases each year.
DISADV: It is undemocratic
-The Privy Council who make Orders in Council is not only made up of elected MPs but also unelected judges and bishops.
-E.G a SI was passed in 2012 by the Minister of Justice (and unelected civil servants) restricting the rights of immigrants to get legal aid. This SI was challenged in court and it was decided that the SI had been made ultra vires and may not be representative of public opinion.
-This means that important laws may not represent what the public want.
-However, it would be impossible for Parliament to make laws about everything, and so it is necessary to trust others to make laws about less urgent things whilst Parliament focus on important matters.
DISADV: It can be complex
-Can be long and complicated and often requires judges to interpret the wording to fully understand them.
-E.G R (Rogers) V Swindon NHS Trust, where the case involved technical rules and specific drugs, and the court had to decide what was ‘exceptional’ in relation to medical needs.
-This means it is hard to the public to understand delegated legislation and it may be unclear how exactly they should apply in practice.
-However, this may be because SIs are created by people with special knowledge, meaning that the law should, in theory, be made with expertise.
DISADV: The sheer volume of it
-Over 3000 SIs and several thousand by-laws are made each year, often with little publicity.
-E.G when the British Airports Authority passed a by-law stopping passengers from taking tennis racquets on planes. A passenger was fined for doing this even though he was unaware he was doing anything wrong.
-It is impossible for the average person to be aware of all these laws, meaning that individuals and companies may be unaware of what is legal and illegal.
-However, one reason there is so much DL is because local areas have their own by-laws that are tailored to be effective in a specific area, which is advantageous.
DISADV: Not always effective
-The scrutiny committee can only refer problems to Parliament and hope they decide to take action, and very few judicial reviews are actually successful.
-E.G In 2018, nearly 3,600 reviews were requested, but only 184 cases went ahead and the Government lost 40% of these.
-This means that there may be quite a lot of bad delegated legislation being made that is not being resolved properly, which is problematic.
-However, it is still positive that the courts are able to solve the problem in the cases they hear, and having a committee to double check work for Parliament is still beneficial.
