Office of the Parliamentary Counsel
From House of Lords Hansard, 21 January 1998, col. 1600
Lord McIntosh of Haringey (extract from his winding up speech for the Government in a debate on legislative drafting)
I said earlier that I would return to the question of explanatory material. Here, as some noble Lords said - the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brightman, in particular - there has been an important development since our short Starred Question debate on 11th November. Both our procedure committee and the modernisation committee in another place have endorsed a proposal by the First Parliamentary Counsel for a major improvement in the material provided alongside Bills.
The new material will be set out in explanatory notes. Those will subsume the material at present contained in the Explanatory Memorandum and Notes on Clauses but extend and improve it. The notes will be made available alongside the Bills when they are first published, not at Second Reading, updated when Bills move from one House to the other and updated finally at Royal Assent. I do not think I can promise the noble Lord, Lord Lester, that they will be available free in hard copy. That would be a great precedent in government publishing, particularly since we charge for the Bills themselves. However, as he reminded the House, they are certainly available on the Internet.
Like the present explanatory memoranda, the notes will not constitute legislative text and will not be amended or passed by Parliament. They will be prepared by the department responsible for the Bill. The First Parliamentary Counsel has provided two examples showing how the new notes, by explaining the key points of legislation in non-technical language and setting out relevant background material, can assist the reader to understand legislation. The examples are reproduced in the Second Report of the Select Committee on the Modernisation of the House of Commons.
On the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lester, as to whether they can be taken into account in the courts, alongside anything I say following the case of Pepper v. Hart, the only answer I can give is that it is for the courts to decide what attention they should pay to them.
Note: The report referred to above is: Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons, Second Report 'Explanatory Material for Bills' House of Commons 389, 3rd December 1997.