- Following my earlier highlights, check out Spyblog on the second day -
"If you thought that yesterday's debates on controversial Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill were difficult to follow, then today's list of Amendments is even more obscure.Hello? Any proper journalists out there? You guys should be all over this.
"What is clear is that since all the Government Amendments were 'programmed' or 'guillotined' to be dealt with yesterday, somehow, as if by magic, the one Government amendment which we saw as a partial concession, New Clause 26, which would have prevented the Human Rights Act 1998 from being amended or repealed , by Order, and which would partially have prevented the new legislation from being used to self-modify itself, has been dropped!"
Update: It's passed. 259 votes to 213. It's now up to the Lords and then a united front alliance of the Tories and Lib Dems in the Commons on the third reading. After that, a stroke of a ministerial pen is all that stands between us and dictatorship. Hyperbolic? No, not really.
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... and not only that, but the Government now wants to bring in Part 3 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). What this means, amongst other things, is that the Police would have the right to demand individuals and businesses hand over their encryption keys (used for sending scrambled emails, protecting files, etc.) or be criminalised:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39269746,00.htm
http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/05/18/1419202.shtml
Big Brother-style dictatorship, here we come...
There is absolutely nothing to suggest that the government could use the Act to amend it: it is a cardinal rule of administrative law that a delegate cannot use his powers to expand his own powers. This is one reason why the House of Lords rejected the interpretation that Acts passed under the Parliament Acts are delegated legislation, as it tended to support Jackson's contention that the 1949 Act was void.
There is no suggestion that orders under the Reg & Leg Act would be other than delegated legislation, and so it would be ultra vires and so void to attempt to use those very powers to widen their scope.
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