Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 4 June 1964.
Sir Eric Fletcher
, Islington East
12:00,
4 June 1964
Would not the Joint Under-Secretary agree that if Europeans want to avail themselves of Scottish law at Gretna Green there is no need for them to go through England to do so?
Laws are the rules by which a country is governed. Britain has a long history of law making and the laws of this country can be divided into three types:- 1) Statute Laws are the laws that have been made by Parliament. 2) Case Law is law that has been established from cases tried in the courts - the laws arise from test cases. The result of the test case creates a precedent on which future cases are judged. 3) Common Law is a part of English Law, which has not come from Parliament. It consists of rules of law which have developed from customs or judgements made in courts over hundreds of years. For example until 1861 Parliament had never passed a law saying that murder was an offence. From the earliest times courts had judged that murder was a crime so there was no need to make a law.
