Part of Women and Equalities – in the House of Commons at 10:30 am on 28 October 2010.
Lynne Featherstone
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Government Equalities Office)
10:30,
28 October 2010
We have decided not to opt in to the European directive at the moment, but we are keeping a watching brief. When it is implemented, we might well decide to do so, but we are already doing most of the things required by the directive to a good standard and we do not want to be inhibited by introducing Laws in this country. Several things that we do already would need transposing into legislation, but we do not need to make legislation to prove to the Commissioners what we are doing already.
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.
