Real lives will be ruined by the delay to the laws dropped with the prorogation of parliament
The prorogation of parliament has been variously cast as an attempted coup or a smart move in delivering the referendum mandate.
Either way, many among both the fans and the critics have overlooked the impact that the end of a parliamentary term can have on real people.
For when parliament is prorogued, dissolved or dismissed, numerous putative bits of legislation get lost.
The rules of parliamentary procedure mean that any bill which has not cleared the entire legislative process has to go back to the beginning in the new parliament, unless the government explicitly carries it over. With time tight before the prorogation, only three budding laws will stay where they are this time. The rest will have to be reintroduced, and start again the full process of votes in both houses and committee approval.
At the very best, it can set back ordinary legislation a few years; at worst, the impetus behind laws can evaporate entirely, meaning that they are never made.
Often these are unsexy but important pieces of legislation. They are things that are unlikely to make it into a manifesto or inspire a march, but that have a tangible impact on people’s lives. Losing them in the washing-up process at the end of parliament can have a real detrimental effect, sometimes setting reform back decades.
Two particular pieces of government legislation demonstrate this misfortune this time round. The Domestic Abuse Bill included a number of legal reforms that would help defeat domestic abuse – including introducing a statutory definition and improving the police and court process for complainants.
While the Prime Minister has pledged to reintroduce a version of this legislation when parliament returns, it is not hard to imagine the effects that any delay to such a bill might have on victims.
Similarly, the Divorce Bill, which sought to introduce no-fault divorce and pave the way for more amicable separations, has not been carried forward. This is a law which has a real impact on couples across the country. Those who are not prepared to make fault-based allegations must wait for up to five years to be divorced, while defending the divorce also offers a way for abusive partners to trap their spouses in marriages, weaponising the legal system.
This will worsen the lives of the 120,000 couples a year who choose to end their marriage, and of those closest to them – including, often, their own children.
It is hard to build up the steam in parliament for them to pass again, especially where those who are affected lack the resources and accessibility to lobby politicians.
In my own work arguing for no-fault divorce, MPs were supportive, but few cared enough to put it at the heart of their work in Westminster – despite polls showing that 75 per cent of voters support the move. It is illustrative that a law on the same subject was quietly dropped after the dissolution of parliament in 1997, and has only now come back more than two decades later.
Whatever one’s views on Brexit, lots of good legislation has been kyboshed by prorogation (for the record, an election would have had the same effect). This is a perennial problem with the system, and one which is often overlooked by Westminster watchers.
The political box office is dominated by big issues like Brexit, foreign policy, and public spending, with too little attention paid to the small changes which parliament can make to improve lives across the country.
The Prime Minister intends to have delivered Brexit by the end of October. Should he come good on his pledge, it can only be hoped that more parliamentary time can be made for issues away from the headlines, which nonetheless make a real difference.
With our divorce from the EU effected, parliament should start by streamlining the process for domestic disentanglements.
Main image credit: Getty