How can we continue our commitment to making law better for everyone?
The autumn of 2013 has proven to be an exciting and successful time for the Good Law team. We’ve learnt a lot, generated lots of ideas and perhaps most importantly, we’ve engaged the public in our vision to make our law better for everyone. Although the initiative is recognised as an ambitious and long term programme, eight months on from its official launch, encouraging and positive strides are already being made.
Our efforts continued in earnest in September 2013 with the first of our three ‘Good Law Workshops’. Generously hosted by the Institute for Government, these events got together lawyers, policy makers, legal publishers, third sector organisations, Government, Parliament, academics and passionate volunteers with one shared goal- to make legislation understandable and accessible for all.
Groups were asked to analyse problems, explore solutions and develop ideas and what followed was some really radical thinking. The groups focused on Good Law in the context of both law-making (the content of the law, and its language and style) and the user experience (the architecture of the statute book as a whole and the way law is published).
At the first session participants thought about their ideal legal world and came up with the germ of some ideas to pursue- @Puffles2010 summarised that very well. There were plenty of gripes, energetic exchanges of viewpoints but above all some great ideas. The second session was more focussed, as participants explored what was already happening and thought about what practical things could be done to improve the law and law-making. Participants’ views on the ways in which information architecture and digital technology could be used to enhance the quality and accessibility of our statute book were inspired and as one participant put it ‘it’s opened my eyes to things I wouldn’t have imagined possible’.
The third session saw the groups presenting their ideas in the form of possible projects. The presentations showed that the groups had taken their remit seriously and come up with some really practical proposals. The ideas generated are already bearing fruit and have inspired a series of pilots which will be developed over the next few months.
We were blown away by the enthusiasm and engagement of these busy people, and their commitment to the promotion of clear, necessary, coherent, effective and accessible legislation and we are very grateful to them all for their contribution.
Similarly, we are also very grateful to our Good Law Champions and to everyone who worked on and engaged in the Cabinet Office’s events during Parliament Week- a UK wide programme of events designed to inspire, engage and connect people with parliamentary democracy. This initiative, run by the House of Commons with the support of the House of Lords, presented a fantastic opportunity for the Cabinet Office and Parliament to work together to promote Good Law and to demystify legislation and the legislative process..
The events, debates and seminars run throughout the week demonstrated the wide and varied way in we can help to break down the barriers between legislation, the legislative process and the general public.
We ran sessions of ‘Legislate?!’, a board game showing the life cycle of legislation from policy to law, with Senior Civil Servants also being on hand to explain and clarify the process along the way. The Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office got involved too, playing ‘Legislate?!’ as well as chairing a lively debate in Admiralty House between four Parliamentarians and an engaged audience on the relationship between Parliament and the Executive.
At every event, we were struck by the diverse mix of people who came along as well as the number of young people who got involved through attending sessions and asking questions.
The Good Law initiative fed into all of the events run by the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel during the week and provided another opportunity to appeal to everyone interested in legislation to get involved and join the debate. We ran a very popular Instant drafting booth, where policy ideas were transformed into draft clauses on the spot. This provided an opportunity for the general public to see the pitfalls of drafting legislation and the importance of keeping legislation as clear and understandable as possible. Drafters from the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel spoke with members of the public about their expectations and helped them to be confident that legislation is for them and should not be confined to the dusty shelves of a law library.
The feedback received from Parliament Week has been overwhelmingly positive with 90% of respondents agreeing that they that they had learnt more about the legislative process and the parliamentary process. Overall, the week was a huge success; not only did we start to break down the mystique of legislation; we also cemented the idea that the only way to achieve Good Law is through adopting a collaborative approach in the future.
The Good Law team are immensely grateful to all who participated in both the Good Law Workshops and Parliament Week 2013. If you have any feedback on either of these events or suggestions about what we should be doing to achieve Good Law then please write to us or tweet your suggestions using the hashtag #Goodlaw.
Finally, on a personal note, I’d like to say how much I have enjoyed my first 6 months of leading the Good Law team. It’s been exciting and inspiring to work with such a talented and diverse range of people on something that has the potential to make such a difference. I’m enormously grateful for the commitment and enthusiasm I’ve encountered and I’m looking forward to what we might achieve together in 2014.
With very best wishes for Christmas and the New Year.
