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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> The Law Commission >> The Fortieth Annual Report of the Law Commission (Report) [2006] EWLC 299(9) (14 June 2006)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/other/EWLC/2006/299(9).html
Cite as: [2006] EWLC 299(9)

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PART 9

EXTERNAL RELATIONS

The Law Commission greatly values its strong links with a variety of organisations and individuals committed to reforming the law. We are indebted to those who give feedback on our consultation papers, and who provide input and expertise at all stages of the process of making recommendations to Government.

In our published reports, consultations, issues and discussion papers we list the assistance and support we receive from a wide range of people. It would not be possible to list everybody that provides guidance or feeds in views here. In addition to our published work, the Law Commission plays a wide role in the national and international business of law reform. In particular we have worked with:

PARLIAMENT AND MINISTERS

The Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) is our sponsor Department.

The Chairman and Commissioners have met with a number of Ministers during the reporting year to further development of projects. These include:

The Lord Chancellor, the Right Hon. Lord Falconer of Thoroton.

The Home Secretary, the Right Hon. Charles Clarke MP.

The Attorney-General, the Right Hon. The Lord Goldsmith QC.

The Right Hon. Geoff Hoon MP, Leader of the House of Commons.

The Right Hon. Baroness Amos, Leader of the House of Lords.

Fiona McTaggart MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Home Office.

Baroness Andrew, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at ODPM.

We also met with the following Parliamentary Bodies:

Bar Parliamentary Group.

Liaison Committee of the House of Commons.

Chairmen of Committees of the House of Lords.

CONSULTEES AND STAKEHOLDERS

We receive help from a broad range of people who are thanked in the respective consultations and reports issued by the Law Commission. During the course of this year, we were particularly grateful to a number of academics and the judiciary who provided input. Many practitioners and legal associations working in specialist and general fields have given time and support to further our awareness of various areas of work.

On the homicide project, we were particularly supported by a number of victims groups, representatives of the police and the Director of Public Prosecutions. We have worked with industry representatives and groups on a number of projects. The housing projects have relied on representatives of several tribunals, tenants, landlords and Ombudsmen organisations feeding in thoughts and experiences.

SEMINARS, LECTURES AND CONFERENCES, ETC

Members of the Law Commission are frequently invited to attend and speak at seminars and conferences. While we cannot fulfil every request, we try to be as involved as possible in expanding general knowledge about law reform, and engaging people in the processes by which the law is improved. The Chairman has taken part in a variety of events. These include:

Addressed the 50th Anniversary Commonwealth Law Conference.

Spoke at ALRAESA 2005 (Association of Law Reform Agencies of Eastern and Southern Africa) in Entebbe.

Gave the Human Rights lecture to SOAS, the Association of Young Chinese Lawyers.

Gave a closing lecture at the EU/China Legal and Judicial Conference in Beijing.

Participated in a panel discussion on the Radio 4 programme Unreliable Evidence where the topic discussed was criminal liability for the transmission of sexual diseases.

Gave a lecture to Harvard University Law School on self-incrimination.

The Chairman and John Saunders, head of the Statute Law Revision team, attended the annual meeting of the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Statute Law in the House of Lords.

Hugh Beale has taken part in the following lectures, conferences and seminars:

Professor Beale is a member of the Joint Network of Excellence that is funded by the European Commission's Sixth Framework Programme to produce a draft Common Frame of Reference (CFR). This may be adopted by the Commission and other European Union institutions to provide agreed terminology and concepts for revising the existing European Directives on consumer contracts and possibly other Directives, and for drafting any future European legislation on contracts or other fields of private law. It might also form the basis of an "Optional Instrument" that (under proposals made by the Commission for Revision of the Rome Convention on the law applicable to contractual obligations) parties could adopt in place of a national law.

Hugh has been playing an active role in preparing the draft CFR and in presenting it for discussion at meetings of stakeholders organised by the European Commission. During the year he has given numerous lectures on the project, including at the Universities of Dundee, Durham and Tartu (Estonia) and the Hungarian Ministry of Justice in Budapest. He also spoke at the London Conference on European Contract Law: Better Lawmaking through the Common Frame of Reference, hosted by the British Presidency.

Hugh spoke at a conference held at the University of Paris (on reform of the French Civil Code).

In May 2005 Hugh was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Law by the University of Antwerp.

Dr Jeremy Horder attended a conference on French Criminal Law held at Grays Inn; a training seminar organised by the Judicial Studies Board; meetings of the Criminal Justice Council; meetings of the Judicial Studies Board Criminal Committee and met representatives of the Sentencing Guidelines Secretariat.

Stuart Bridge gave a lecture on Reforming the Law of Easements to the Property Bar Association.

In January 2006 Professor Martin Partington was appointed to the DCA Taskforce on Public Legal Education, to which the Commission's work on Renting Homes and Housing Disputes is particularly relevant.

Stuart Bridge is now a member of the Civil Justice Committee of the Judicial Studies Board (JSB), and he attended a training seminar for judges in the specialist jurisdictions, organised by the JSB, as an observer.

Both Martin Partington and Sir Edward Caldwell contributed chapters to a book on law reform produced for the Australian Law Reform Commission 30th Anniversary. Martin also wrote an academic piece on the relationship between Law Reform and Access to Justice that was published in the Winder Yearbook of Access to Justice (a leading Canadian journal).

A paper by Stuart Bridge on The Contribution of the Law Commission to the Reform of Commercial Leases was presented by Julia Jarzabkowski and Joel Wolchover at a conference on Landlord and Tenant Law at New College, Oxford.

SOCIO-LEGAL RESEARCH

The Commission often uses socio-legal, economic and empirical research to ensure that our recommendations to Government are thoroughly considered with sound evidence. Where possible we use existing research, but where funds permit, we sometimes commission external researchers.

The Cohabitation project has commissioned and sponsored research from several sources. Lynda Clarke (Centre for Population Studies, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) has been commissioned to provide data from the Office of National Statistics Longitudinal Study, a 1% sample of the population which links all Censuses from 1971 to 2001 with vital registration data. We have also supported research by Prof. Anne Barlow and Dr Carole Burgoyne (University of Exeter), investigating the impact of the Department for Constitutional Affairs' Living Together Campaign, and work being conducted in the next round of the British Social Attitudes Survey, with Alison Park. We are also supporting a student-conducted public opinion survey run by Prof Gillian Douglas (University of Cardiff) and Cathy Williams (University of Sheffield) relating to remedies for spouses and cohabitants on the death of one partner.

In connection with the Commission's review of the law of murder, the Commission had the great benefit of two pieces of socio-legal research. Professor Barry Mitchell of Coventry University conducted a public survey on mandatory sentencing in cases of criminal homicide. The aim of the survey was to determine whether there appears to be any evidence of the lilely support amongst members of the public for the mandatory sentencing of persons convicted of unlawful homicide. The results of Professor Mitchell's research can be found in Appendix A of the Commission's consultation paper "A New Homicide Act for England and Wales?"

The Commission commissioned Professor Ronnie Mackay of De Montfort University to undertake an empirical study of convictions for infanticide in the period 1989-2002. We expect to be able to publish the results of Professor Mackay's research as an appendix to our final report.

We are very grateful to both Professor Mitchell and Professor Mackay for the invaluable contributions to the Commission's review of the law of homicide.

The public law team has sought to access socio-legal learning by seconding leading socio-legal scholars as visiting academic consultants. Since, respectively, February 2005 and January 2006, Professor Dave Cowan and Alex Marsh have devoted two days a week each to the team's projects.

The public law team also received a report by Caroline Hunter and Judy Nixon of Sheffield Hallam University on Australian Tenancy Tribunals which will be published together with background material on the Housing Disputes project.

LAW COMMISSIONS IN THE BRITISH ISLES

We work closely with the Scottish Law Commission (SLC) on various projects. Over the course of the year, we have collaborated on insurance contract law. We have been greatly assisted in our work on cohabitation by discussions with the SLC. We remain in regular contact with the SLC concerning the two Commissions' trust law work.

Much of the Law Commission's work on statute law revision is conducted jointly with the Scottish Law Commission and many of the repeal candidates contained in Statute Law Revision Reports extend to Scotland. Indeed because Statute Law (Repeals) Acts extend throughout the United Kingdom and the Isle of Man, the Law Commission liaises regularly on its repeal proposals not only with the Scottish Law Commission but also with the authorities in Wales (the Office of the Secretary of State for Wales and the Counsel General to the National Assembly for Wales) and with the authorities in Northern Ireland and in the Isle of Man. Their help and support in considering and responding to the repeal proposals is much appreciated.

We were pleased to host the first meeting of the Chairs and Chief Executives of the four Law Commissions in the British Isles on 20 February 2006. Attendees included the Law Commission's Chairman, Sir Roger Toulson and Chief Executive, Steve Humphreys; the Scottish Law Commission's Chairman Lord Eassie and Chief Executive, Michael Lugton; the Law Reform Commission of Ireland's President, Mrs Justice Catherine McGuinness and Commissioner Patricia Rickard-Clarke; and the Law Reform Advisory Committee for Northern Ireland's Chairman, Mr Justice Declan Morgan and Secretary, Clare Irvine.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

We have continued to receive international guests at the Law Commission, and to visit colleagues around the world. Among the guests we have received or met are:

William Gibson, Legal Services in the European Commission.

Alan Holloway, Secretary of the Sierra Leone Law Reform Commission.

Shandy Liu Wing-man, who was on secondment to Parliamentary Counsel's office from the Government of Hong Kong.

The Honourable Mr Justice Bahati, The Honourable Mr Justice Mwesiumo, and The Honourable William Mdundo, Chairman and Commissioners from the Law Reform Commission of Tanzania.

Alipate Qetaki, Chairman of the Law Reform Commission of Fiji.

A group of students from Penn State University-Harrisburg, USA.

Five Study Fellows taking part in the Chevening Fellowship Programme in Bradford and Birmingham University: Mandefrot Fenta, Director of the Ethiopian National Justice System Reform Programme; Sicelo Dlamini, Head of the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs in Swaziland; Altangerel Taivankhuu from the Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs in Mongolia; and Federico Talavera from the Department of the Secretary of the Interior in Mexico.

Catherine Munyao from the Law Reform Commission of Kenya.

Warren Young, Acting President of the New Zealand Law Commission and the Right Honourable Sir Geoffrey Palmer, the new President.

Professor Eva Ryrstedt, University of Lund, Sweden.

Professor Paul Robinson, Northwestern University, USA.

Jenny Rudolf of the Tasmania Law Reform Institute.

Professor Karen H Rothenberg, Professor of Law, University of Maryland.

David Lyons, Chairman of the Jersey Law Commission.

Ahmad Fairuz B Zainol Abidin, Deputy Public Prosecutor, Attorney Generals' Chambers, Malaysia.

We were visited by the Commonwealth Secretariat led by Mr Roger Rose, the Programme Director. The group consisted of Mrs Charmaine Rosan, Crown Counsel in the British Virgin Islands Government; Mrs Nor Bee Ariffin, Deputy Parliamentary Draftsman, Attorney General's Chambers in Malaysia; Mr Terence Arnold, Solicitor General of New Zealand, Crown Law Office in New Zealand; Mr Emmanuel Giyomatala, Assistant Legislative Counsel, Office of the Legislative Counsel in Papua New Guinea; and Mr Danie Maree, Legal Support Specialist, Department of Public Service and Administration in South Africa.

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