PARLIAMENTARY DRAFTING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9163, 10 August 1908, Page 3

PARLIAMENTARY DRAFTING.

The Parliamentary draftsman has a thankless task, says a writer in the London "Daily Mail." If an Act ■•wjrks well the Minister gets the credit; if loop-holei are discovered .in it the draftsman gets the blame. Yet the draftsman is a most important link in the legislative chain. It is he who puts the Minister's ideas—•'the bricks and rafters of the house, ,n.>t±ie hous-j itself," He does his besc to construct a simple', straight .forward Bill, and when it goes before thi House his responsibility ends. It is after this that most of the errors cceip in. Hastily-drawn amendments provide a line crop of legislation. i?'oir years ago the Lord Chief Jus.t;cj and other Judges condemned the a.nbiguous language in which an Act was framed, s trcastically suggesting i iat the gentlemen who drafted the^e , measures should huve sj.ne element- | ary knowledge of crimina' law. "The ointry is staggered soma day by a Wdst Riding judgment. Ireland | awakes to find that inj dealing with education in England and Wales we .have unintentionally swept away Irish technical education; or that in parsing a new Local Go/eminent Act fur her we have directed that the first •cleations shall ba held upon a date i wnicn proves to be a Sunday." But what else can be expected when an Ac; is full of memoirs' aman Iments, "written on top of a hat in the . lobby," with no thought as to possibls conflict with utner portions of tiis Hill? Complaints of laxity in the co istrucdon nf English laws are old.^ 'ln William IV.'s time an Act was,, passed fixinsr the punishment for a certiin offence at fourteen years' , tra importation, "one half thereof to go to the informer, and the other ' half to the King." Sir Henry Foxier (as he then was) once moved a resolution on the que3- • ti in of simplifying the terminology o: r\:ts, but unfortunately the reso- | Union was itself fit to take a place in the list of Parliamentary ambigui- ' tis.-i. Great pains are sometimes tujn with the first drafts of importan; measures. The details of th=s " geond Home Kule Bill were worked ■oat by Earl Spencer, Lord Herschel, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Mr ■Gladstone. Mr iVlorley (as he was t.ien), and Mr Bryce, and then Mr Bryce drew up the scheme wnch went to the Parliamentary ur«»it-*iiian. Sir Wiilliam Harcourt adopted drastic measures in the case of his Death Duties Bill. He cent for Mr Haitians and told ' him that he had ncaived two drafts, neither of which were suitable. "I am going to get you and Sir Alfred Milntr, lo.'k you both up in a room by yo u-selves, without fire, food or dr»..<<, and 1 shall not allow you to come out until you have produced a satisfactory draft of the Bill." The terms were accepted, and a satisfactory draft produced.