Wednesday, June 3, 2009

How many or how much of our laws come from Brussels?

The old rather clichéd joke goes that 90% statistics are made up in the last ten seconds, but this is precisely what comes to mind when people mention that 84% (the figures given vary) of our laws come from Europe. The Liberal Conspiracy have a really good article trying to unearth the reality behind the numbers but the truth is that it's impossible to (honestly) give a figure.

You can't apply maths to Acts of Parliament because it's impossible to know the relative importance of one act over another, in precise terms. Some legislative acts set out far reaching reforms while others just make minor changes to previous legislation. And deciding whether an act belongs to the former category or to the latter is in it-self a highly subjective value judgement.

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