Part of Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 4:15 pm on 13 January 2005.
Dominic Grieve
Shadow Attorney General
4:15,
13 January 2005
I am grateful to the Minister, but Laws change. To illustrate my point, mink fur farming in this country was lawful until a date when it became unlawful. Let us imagine that a person makes a legitimate profit from fur farming in a foreign country and one day the Government of that country pass an Act prohibiting it. At a later stage, an accountant in London who is examining a client's records notes that the client has made a whacking profit from fur farming, which is illegal at that date both in this country and in the foreign country where the fur farming took place. However, he knows that the profit was made at a time when fur farming in the foreign country was lawful. Must he make a disclosure in those circumstances?
A parliamentary bill is divided into sections called clauses.
Printed in the margin next to each clause is a brief explanatory `side-note' giving details of what the effect of the clause will be.
During the committee stage of a bill, MPs examine these clauses in detail and may introduce new clauses of their own or table amendments to the existing clauses.
When a bill becomes an Act of Parliament, clauses become known as sections.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
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.
