MAKING NEW LAWS - THE ROLE OF THE DRAFT LEGISLATIVE PROGRAMME

1. The aim of publishing the Draft Legislative Programme is to set out the Government's current proposals for legislation, to be considered by Parliament in its next session, for comment and consultation before the final programme is published in the Queen's Speech towards the end of the year.

2. In July last year, the Government published its first Draft Legislative Programme, ahead of the 2007-08 Parliamentary session which began with the Queen's Speech in November. The decision to publish a programme in draft was part of the Government's objectives to modernise and open up the law-making process with increased public involvement across the United Kingdom, as outlined in the Green Paper 'The Governance of Britain', also published in July 2007. The innovation was widely welcomed. People do want to be involved in the decision-making process and would like to see this new approach repeated in future.

3. In continuing this approach and publishing the second Draft Legislative Programme, the Government's aim is to make active public engagement an established part of the annual legislative cycle - and through that to improve the quality of the legislation which it introduces to Parliament.

4. The timing of this year's programme, two months earlier than in 2007, reflects comments made last year and gives more of an opportunity for people to make their views known and inform Government thinking at an earlier stage of the policy development process.

5. This approach has been endorsed by the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons into the first Draft Legislative Programme in its report, Scrutiny of the Draft Legislative Programme , in January 2008.

6. One of the recommendations of the Select Committee was that "the Government's main non-legislative plans should be included in the Draft Legislative Programme, alongside the list of proposed bills, in order that the full programme of government is available for scrutiny. This could be achieved through the inclusion of an expanded thematic section within the document."

7. This comment reflects the fact that legislation is not the only way that the Government can act to bring about change. Some changes simply do not require legislation to make them happen and many legislative proposals are supported by a wider programme of related non-legislative activity, which people need to know about in order to understand the full impact of what is being proposed. The Government has therefore accepted the Committee's recommendation and this year's draft legislative programme includes a number of non-legislative proposals which support the overall themes. Although it is clearly not possible to include every such proposal, the Government has adopted the Committee's suggestion of selecting those proposals which are key to each of the themes, and concentrated on forthcoming Green and White Papers, policy reviews and secondary legislation.

8. The Government's response to the Committee's recommendations will be published as a separate document shortly.

9. One message from last year's consultation is that people do not always feel that they have a good understanding of the legislative process. There is a perception that law-making is a technical process of no interest to the public. The Government wants to change this by helping people to understand the process - from the initial proposal of an idea to it being implemented in law. Consultation opens up the policy-making process and shows how the Government must consider the relative merits of different options for tackling a particular issue before taking a final decision.

10. This document gives people the chance to look across the entire Draft Legislative Programme and take a view as to whether the balance of priorities is right or if there are important things that could be included or areas of the programme that are considered to be less important. As a draft programme, the Government fully expects it to develop and change over the course of the year - the content of individual bills may change and new bills may be added before the Queen's Speech as new issues arise and as a result of this consultation.

Consultations on individual bills

11. As well as this consultation on the draft programme, Government departments, as part of the normal process of policy development, hold more detailed consultations on many of the proposals set out here. Some of these consultations include publishing the Bill in draft to show what the clauses would look like.

12. The publication of the Draft Legislative Programme is a gateway to these consultations, making it easier for the public to comment on the whole range of topics proposed for legislation in 2008-09. Chapter 3 sets out the status of any consultation related to the individual bills, and where appropriate signposts weblinks to current consultations or indicates when a consultation is expected to start and where it can be found. This is the place for members of the public to provide comments on the detail of those bills that interest them. If a consultation has already taken place and the Government has already decided what course of action it intends to take, this is also set out clearly in Chapter 3.

13. The Government wants to increase public participation in the legislative process. It hopes that bringing these consultations together in one place will enable people to find out about legislative proposals in areas they might not normally consider directly relevant to them. Last year interesting comments were made on the Draft Legislative Programme by people who were not experts on any particular subject, but were interested members of the public who had obviously taken the time to look through the whole draft programme and give their views.

14. The programme covers a wide range of issues of relevance to everyone. The Government hopes that people will comment on a number of bills across the programme.