Enabling Act - United Kingdom

United Kingdom

After the First World War, an enabling act gave a considerable measure of self-government to the Church of England.

In the 1930s, both Sir Stafford Cripps and Clement Attlee advocated an enabling act to allow a future Labour government to pass socialist legislation which would not be amended by normal parliamentary procedures and the House of Lords. According to Cripps, his "Planning and Enabling Act" would not be able to be repealed, and the orders made by the government using the act would not be allowed discussion in Parliament.

Cripps also suggested measures against the monarchy, but quickly dropped the idea.

In 1966 Oswald Mosley advocated a government of national unity drawn from "the professions, from science, from the unions and the managers, from businessmen, the housewives, from the services, from the universities, and even from the best of the politicians". This coalition would be a "hard centre" oriented one which would also get Parliament to pass an Enabling Act in order to stop what Mosley described as "time-wasting obstructionism of present procedure". He also claimed that Parliament would always retain the power to dismiss his government by vote of censure if its policies failed or if it attempted to "override basic British freedoms".

In early 2006 the highly controversial yet little-publicised Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill was introduced to Parliament. This Bill, if enacted into law, would have enabled Government ministers to amend or repeal any legislation (including the L&RR Bill itself), subject to vague and highly subjective restraints, by decree and without recourse to Parliament. The Bill was variously described as the Abolition of Parliament Bill and "...of first-class constitutional significance... markedly alter the respective and long standing roles of minister and Parliament in the legislative process". The Bill is, in essence, an Enabling Act in all but name.

After some amendment by the government and Lords, the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill received Royal Assent on 8 November 2006. Amendments included removing its ability to modify itself or the Human Rights Act 1998; most of the other modifications were much more subjectively defined.