How-To: First Reading

The First Reading, where legislation is briefly introduced to the House, before debate begins.
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Barclay A.A. Stanley
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How-To: First Reading

Post by Barclay A.A. Stanley »

First Reading

Bills are introduced, but not debated, in First Reading, with the exception of a speech by the introducer. Generally speaking, only Bills introduced as scheduled Private Member's Bills and Government Bills will receive time for Debate. Along with your bill, you may post a speech introducing the bill: in fact, we would advise you to do this, because it will stimulate debate.

The bill will not, however, be debated before it is moved to Second Reading. This can be done by the Leader of the House or the Prime Minister for Government Bills, or by the Shadow Leader of the House or Leader of the Opposition for Opposition day PMBs using their opposition day quota. Exceptions to this rule empowering others may be made by the A-team or preferably by the Party Leadership in the event of absence of both the Leader and the House Leader.

Moving a bill to Second Reading is simple. Whomever is moving the motion posts something like this (do whatever you like with it, you may omit referencing the Speaker, but please bold the text for further emphasis):
Mr. Speaker,

I beg to move that the Bill be read a First Time and be Printed.
Or:
Mr Speaker,

Please move to Second Reading.
As soon as an AV sees that the bill is being moved, he will move the bill to Second Reading. There is no waiting period.
Lt. Col. Sir Barclay A.A. Stanley, Rtd., KBE
Member of Parliament for Macclesfield

Armed with nothing but a pint of gin, Sir Barclay went to battle against the forces of Communism, Socialism, and Liberalism.
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Barclay A.A. Stanley
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Re: How-To: First Reading

Post by Barclay A.A. Stanley »

Bill-writing guide

Writing a bill can be a daunting but rewarding task. On PoliticsUK, we generally expect a high quality of legislation offered to Parliament. Some guidelines for legislation are offered below, as well as a step-by-step guide to writing a bill, from first research to last check.

Guidelines:
  • All bills must look the part. That means you have to format it like a real bill, ready to be passed into statute. Of course, we don’t expect ten-page bills (that would take a whole in-game year to write) and they may be shorter, just a few sections. The Civil Service and (if an opposition PMB) your party advisor will help you.
  • Every bill has to be structured properly, so it has to consist of:
    - A short title, long title, and enactment clause
    - A number of sections, and if needed for longer bills, structured into parts/titles, and, if you're in a really formal mood, schedules.
    - A section defining the commencement procedures and short title.
  • If you’re writing about something that has been legislated about before, we’d prefer if you amend the real laws concerning the case. It just promotes professionalism.
  • Unless you’ve got our permission (which we give sparingly), do NOT copy real bills. You may paraphrase them and use bits in your own words (it’s inevitable), but no copy-pasting from legislation.gov.uk please.
So, how do I write a bill? Martijn’s step-by-step guide.
I hope this explanation will fit the bill (pun entirely intentional). I’m going to explain simply to you how to write a bill, from research to final checks. But, without further ado: the first steps.

1) Research
Of course, you first have to get an idea. Usually these ideas come from manifestos, think tank reports and party campaign guides, but they’re quite sketchy. Before you embark on writing an act, it might be a good idea to check if within the competences of some earlier act you might do the stuff by ministerial orders or orders-in-council, which is easily done by presenting a ministerial statement and maybe a white paper. If an idea is based on some real policy, it might be worth it to find the text of the real life measure that introduced it. For finding the text of laws, go to http://legislation.gov.uk. Be sure to go to advanced search: there you can tick a box saying that you want the text you see to be as originally enacted, not with all the amendments up to the present day.

So, now the search begins for acts we need to amend. Usually, these things are also mentioned in reports, campaign guides and manifestos, so be clever and look them up there. If not, just look them up, on Wikipedia (handy if you don't really understand the technical language of a bill) or directly in the legislation search engine. For example, if you want to do something with health, I’d look up “Health Act” at legislation.gov.uk and tell the search engine to give me all the bills up to the year in which the game started (or, in fact, up to a few years in the future). Take care to make sure a bill was enacted in the game world! Anything before game start should be okay.

It could be wise if you’ve got a large amount of new drafting to do to structure and write out exactly what you want your bill to do.

2) Title
Give your act a short title. This is usually something bland and uninspirational and may involved brackets. So, if you’re reforming the National Health Service radically, you may call it “Health Act 1990”. If you’re, for example, only reforming dental care, then name it “Health (Dental Care) Act 1990”.
Then give your act a long title. This takes the form of the formula “AN ACT to… etc. etc.” and explains what the act intends to do. So, for example, “AN ACT to make provision for the free provision of dental care in the NHS, and for related purposes.”

3) Enactment clause
Then it’s time for the enactment clause, the traditional formula invoking the Queen-in-Parliament that experienced PolUK draftsmen such as myself know by heart (crazy, huh?). It’s:

BE IT ENACTED by the Queen’s Most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Temporal and Spiritual, and Commons, in the present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows-:”

Some bills have a different enacting formula. The most used of these bills is the Finance Act, which has an enacting formula asking the Queen to grant money for the public expenses. Another, less used, different enacting formula invokes the Parliament Act to force something through the House of Lords.

4) Text
Let’s write the text of your bill now. Separate the bill into sections, sub-sections and sub-sub-sections and, if needed, group them into parts/titles dealing with several subjects if it’s a really long bill. If you want to make your bill sound the part, you might find these few pointers as to the most occurring stock formulas helpful:
  • It’s “Parliament”, not “the Parliament”.
  • “as the Secretary of State may by order appoint”; “by order of the Secretary of State”: the Secretary of State may by order do certain things under this act. Note that the SoS in question is not named as having a certain portfolio, for the sole reason that this might change.
  • Use “act” when referring to the bill. Technically, it isn’t an act yet, but otherwise we have to change every “bill” to “act” before posting the bill in Hansard.
  • Look up the technical references to a certain organ in the bills you peruse and try to emulate that. For example: “The local education authority maintaining a county, voluntary or special school”.
And now for a clause from one of mine own bills:
(1) Where the Secretary of State is not satisfied that a school is acting in accordance with the provisions of sections 2 and 3, the power conferred upon the Secretary of State in Schedule 4 of the Education Act 1980 to terminate the participation agreement of a school shall extend to this situation;

5) Short title, extent and commencement
The last article always contains provisions for the short title, extent and commencent. This is where you tell how the bill is to be cited, when it is going to enter into force, and where in the United Kingdom it applies. The first sub-section is the short title of the Act:

(1) This Act may be cited as the “Education (Decency and Neutrality) Act 1984”;

The second defines when the act is going to enter into force. First rule: this is NEVER “upon Constitutional passage” or “upon Royal assent”. This may be, for example, a set date:

(2) This Act shall enter into force on the 1st of January, 1990

Or you may empower the Secretary of State to set the date for commencement.

(1) This Act shall enter into force upon such a date as the Secretary of State may by order appoint;

Alternatively, you may even empower the Secretary of State to set different dates for different sections:

(2) This Act shall enter into force upon such a date as the Secretary of State may by order appoint; and different dates shall be appointed for different purposes;

Finally, you have to set the extent of the bill. Where does it apply? England and Wales? England, Wales and Scotland? The whole United Kingdom? This consideration may seem trivial, but Scottish Law is different than the law of England and Wales, so usually one act is enacted for England and Wales, and another for Scotland, in real life. There may be differences between the law as applicable to Scotland and the law as applies South of the border, even in the pre-devolution area, so be sure to check.

(3) This Act shall extend throughout the United Kingdom, OR (3) This Act shall extend to England and Wales.

6) Explanatory Notes (not mandatory)
If your bill is really technical or complex, you may find it helpful to include explanatory notes in the bill, briefly explaining the relevant previous enactments and also explaining, in somewhat more detail, the effect of the provisions on a section-by-section basis.

7) Party Headquarters and Cabinet
If you haven’t done so already, it’s good practice to post a new bill in Party Headquarters and in Cabinet for your fellow party members to comment on it before presenting it to the House. At this point, you can also ask the Civil Service to check the bill’s technical aspects. If you get to it, you could even give your fellow party members some pointers on how the bill is to be defended in Parliament and in the Press.

8) First Reading
It’s all done! Now go and post the bill in First Reading, along with a speech introducing it, and be sure to follow the First Reading rules. Once Second Reading is scheduled, your bill will be debated. Good luck!
[/quote]
Lt. Col. Sir Barclay A.A. Stanley, Rtd., KBE
Member of Parliament for Macclesfield

Armed with nothing but a pint of gin, Sir Barclay went to battle against the forces of Communism, Socialism, and Liberalism.
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