Primary Legislation

Parliament is the legislative body of England and Wales. Although there is a degree of independence between the legislative, executive (being the government) and judiciary, Parliament will tend to be dominated by the executive. Acts of Parliament are known as primary legislation. There are Public Acts that affect the whole population or a whole class of the population and Private Acts, which are promoted by organisations outside Parliament such as local authorities or companies.

Acts start off as Bills and are debated in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Detailed consideration is given to a Bill at an early stage through committees. The House of Commons, being a democratically elected body, has the power to force bills through, but the House of Lords plays an important part in revising legislation. This is a time consuming process and therefore there will usually be a compromise whereby the House of Lords will allow a Bill to pass but subject to amendments. This balance of power may shift in the future as the current government are committed to extensive reforms of the House of Lords.

The Monarch, who is the head of state, needs to give assent to a Bill to make it law but is bound by convention to give such assent.

The doctrine of Parliamentary supremacy requires the courts to apply Acts of Parliament as the supreme law. This differs from a written constitution in that where an Act of Parliament conflicts with an earlier Act the later Act is to take precedence. Therefore whilst it is possible to have an Act which sets out that which may be considered to be fundamental rights and laws, any later Act could amend or repeal that earlier Act. That said, it may be politically difficult for any future Parliament to repeal the Human Rights Act which incorporates into UK law the principles set out in the European Convention on Human Rights.

There are two main ways in which the Courts have interpreted Acts. The literal approach is to take the words of the Act at face value. Whilst this reduces the risk of judge-made law it may occasionally lead to questionable results. The other approach is the purposive approach. This involves the Court looking beyond the literal meaning of the words and instead trying to determine the intention of Parliament in making the Act. Whilst this may seem logical it can lead to judge-made law where the Court does violence to the plain words of the Act. The purposive approach has been used to construe Acts of Parliament so as to make them compatible with European law even though they are plainly not. The Courts have thereby used this approach to recognise the primacy of European law (as discussed later) without destroying the doctrine of Parliamentary supremacy.