Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Leader of the House – in the House of Commons at 2:30 pm on 23 April 2007.
Shailesh Vara
Shadow Deputy Leader of the House of Commons
2:30,
23 April 2007
Under this Government, there has been an ever-increasing amount of legislation. Since 1997, the number of pages of secondary legislation has increased by almost 20 per cent. and the number of pages of primary legislation has increased by 125 per cent. What measures do the Government intend to introduce to ensure that there can be proper and effective scrutiny of all those Laws?
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.
