Parliamentary Scrutiny of the Quality of Legislation within Europe

Abstract

Abstract The topic of this article is a comparative analysis of parliamentary scrutiny of the quality of legislation contained in bills in the British system and in Continental Europe (with a special focus on Italy as case study). The main difference between the two systems is due to the establishment, especially in Continental Europe, of specific parliamentary tools, standards, or bodies to scrutinize the quality of legislation. The hypothesis underpinning the article is that this is the result of the different approaches used to draft bills in the two systems. The British model of legislative drafting has shown its strength: clearly, it is better having a legislative product which is well-drafted upstream, instead of a scrutiny downstream. However, in the United Kingdom, there is currently a debate concerning the opportunity to strengthen parliamentary scrutiny of the quality of legislation by establishing legislative standards and bodies (such as a Legislative Standards Committee) for this purpose. The article will describe the Continental system of parliamentary scrutiny of the quality of legislation and then focus on the British debate. This will help to draw some conclusions, asking whether Continental Europe’s model of parliamentary scrutiny could be of any value for the United Kingdom.