talking to my MP, who is a keen DIYer and I moaned about these regulations. He had not heard about them and wants to look them up with a view to commenting on them in an appropriate place.
Can someone kindly supply me with the official references for both, so that I can refer him to them?
Most of these things are 'laid' before Parliament and if no one raises an objection within x days they are approved by default. I haven't got time to turn it up now but the parent act - The Building Act - probably says something like "The Minister may make regulations concerning ..... "
Perhaps when he breaks his windows "in the course of a loving affray" it involves him being thrown bodily through the window, damaging the frame as well as the gless, requiring a complete replacement....
I fear Tony is correct. Most of these new rules come under the heading of secondary legislation. To be fair, primary legislation (a new act) is incredibly expensive so, leaving aside any assessment of the sense of what is being proposed, it is sensible to allow for "minor" changes (we can argue about the word "minor") to be done as secondary legislation under the umbrella of the original act (which will have been voted on years ago). Nonetheless, it is the duty of MP's to represent their constituents in all paliamentary legislative matters. It is perhaps unreasonable to expect all MP's to know about all forthcoming legislation (especially as new legislation seems to be very popular in certain quarters). Some know nothing of course, and this should be deplored. Others make it their business to take an interest in certain areas.
This government is very fond of the "statutory instrument". This is "enabling legislation" that allows for just this type of behaviour, once it is in place, you can then sweep through additional annual changes with far less scrutiny than is required for primary legislation.
IIRC it was usualy used to allow things like budgets to be automatically enacted each year, but seems to be getting far more use as a way of "burying" unpopular legislation out of conspicuous public view.
But, I suspect, business is also much more in favour of this way of doing things. The general pattern seems to be that it is decided that some regulations need to be amended. A draft is put together and sent to hundreds of interested parties and published for public comment generally, and then, hopefully taking account of the responses, the final regulations get published.
The upside of this is that the key input into the process comes from the relevant industry groups who should really know what they are talking about, also those affected have a good idea of what is coming long before it happens. The downside of course is that these groups may well have vested interests to further - the ECA have made no secret of the fact that they think Part P is a wonderful innovation and if ant future government sought to revoke it, the ECA would have letters etc on every MP's desk within a week.
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