Clause 34 - Amendments and repeals
Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill [Lords]
3:30 pm
Mr David Heath (Shadow Minister (Home Affairs), Home Affairs; Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat)
Obviously, there are still British overseas territories to be catered for, but I would like that to be done either under their own statute or under the more general statute. We keep some rather antiquated statutes around simply because of inertia—because no one can be bothered to rework them into something more current. That complicates the law. To the 1884 Act—which I suspect was designed for the colonies of Australia, New Zealand and Canada, our dominions at that time—on the statute book for the sake of the one person on the Falkland Islands seems nonsense. I wish that, when drafting legislation, we would try to consolidate where possible. To repeal an Act of doubtful utility and some antiquity and re-insert the provisions into another Act under a consequential amendment would be a better way to order our business than to require people to look through a great number of old statutes to find the one that applies. I leave that for the Minister's consideration.