Legislation in a democracy.....

Trying to avoid yet another 'party political' bunfight / slanging match, ( as if ! ). This is more to do with the political process and how our Government functions in a 'democracy', and applies equally to the previous incumbents as the current bunch.

I was listening to a R4 program late last night, and to condense what was discussed, ( hopefully I get it right ), they were talking about how Acts of Parliament are presented to the House of Commons for debate & voting. Much of an Act, when presented to the House, is in the form of 'the Minister will produce regulations to .....' or 'Statutory Instruments will be introduced to....', leaving out any detail of how what is proposed will look or work. These Regulations and Statutory Instruments are produced after the Bill has been passed, sometimes from the Minister and sometimes from one of his/her juniors, and are discussed in Committee instead of the main chamber. However, these committee sittings generally last no more than 2 hours, during which many hundred items might be presented collectively to the few MPs present, and to which any Opposition members of the committee will have had little or no advanced notice of what is contained within them.

The question is, is this an acceptable method of scrutinising what Parliament is doing on our behalf, or is it a travesty of open and accountable Government ?