Parliament abolished while it sleeps?

The recent Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill
means ministers will be authorised to write or change UK laws
without going through Parliament.

The implications of this should not be underestimated.
If this Bill is made law, it can be used to legitimise totalitarianism.

Read what Professors of the Cambridge Law Faculty said about it.

Even if you have never taken any political action in your life, at least (so far) you have lived in a country where this is possible.

This Bill is apparently intended to take the headache and red tape out of legislating. However, if it becomes law, especially in its current form, it will mean that Cabinet ministers will be able to pass new laws or alter existing ones "by order" - in other words, because they feel like it. This can include creating new crimes, giving new powers to the home office or the police, re-defining existing offences, altering citizens' rights... the list is endless.

Among the few restraining factors are provisos that any new crime defined under it may not carry a sentence of more than two years, and that it may not be used to raise taxes. However, since this new Bill is not prevented from applying even to itself, ministers could potentially change it to enable them to do precisely those things, or even (taken to its logical extreme) to allocate all legislative power to themselves.

Here is the opening clause of the Bill:

(1) A Minister of the Crown may by order make provision for either or both of the following purposes—
   (a) reforming legislation;
   (b) implementing recommendations of any one or more of the United Kingdom Law         Commissions, with or without changes.

This is exactly the sort of power that dictators have. Not enough MPs seem to realise the implications - let's wake them up.

You can read the full Bill here: Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

Read further comment here from the broadsheets:
The Times - David Howarth
The Times - Professor J R Spencer, QC et al
The Times - Daniel Finkelstein
The Observer - Henry Porter
The Guardian - Matthew Tempest et al

And from the independents:
Spy.org
Spy.org follow-up
Rightlinks
Indymedia

More links and info can be found at the following site:

SaveParliament.org.uk

What can you do?

ACT NOW!
This Bill has been going through the Committee stage with little or no amendment. Drop whatever you're doing for fifteen minutes and do the following - it WILL be more important!

1. Write to your MP:
Click here to send a mail to your MP. Even if it is short, if it is in your own words it will be paid attention to. Apparently cut-and-pasted messages tend to get ignored so express your own concern, however simply.

2. Tell everybody: email your entire address book, personal and business. None of us want to be looking back on this as the UK equivalent of Hitler's Enabling Act. Let's make sure our MPs know this.

3. Alert the media: if you have any contacts in the media, make a special effort to get them to talk about this. It should be front page news.

4. Join the campaign: Click here to be kept up to date on developments and local action in your area.