STATUTE LAW REVISION: SIXTEENTH ... - Law Commission

enactments the saving related to. Fortunately it has been discovered in recent
years that the Bill for each Statute Law Revision Act up to 1953 actually identified
the grounds of repeal of each enactment and the cases in which the Westbury
savings were relevant. This has enabled the history of each such enactment to
be traced subsequent to the repeal and an assessment made of the present
need for the saving in respect of that particular enactment. Using this technique
the savings in the two Statute Law Revision Acts of 1888 have been identified as
being no longer required and the Acts were wholly repealed by the Statute Law
(Repeals) Act 1989. Similarly this technique enabled the Statute Law Revision
Acts 1894 and 1927, and section 1 of the Statute Law Revision Act 1948, to be
repealed by the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1993. Further use of this technique
has shown that the Westbury saving in many more Acts are no longer required
thereby permitting the repeal of these Acts, mostly in whole. Eleven such Acts
are now proposed for repeal on the basis that they are spent.
157 Provisions relating to Northern Ireland
9.1 Three Statute Law Revision Acts were promoted in respect of legislation in force
in Northern Ireland after the Parliament of Northern Ireland ceased to have
responsibility for such matters. None of these contained any sort of Westbury
saving. The Statute Law Revision (Northern Ireland) Act 1973 was an Act “to
revise the statute law of Northern Ireland by repealing obsolete, spent,
unnecessary or superseded enactments” (long title) which was effected by
section 1 and the Schedule. These provisions are spent and may be repealed. 8
The Statute Law Revision (Northern Ireland) Acts 1976 and 1980 are on lines
precisely similar to those of the 1973 Act. Both are spent and are therefore
proposed for repeal in their entirety.
9.2 The Lord Chancellor’s Department, the Lord Advocate’s Department and the
authorities in Northern Ireland have been consulted and have no objection to the
repeals.
158 Group 2 - Statute Law (Repeals) Acts
9.1 Statute Law (Repeals) Acts enacted as from 1969 have been based upon the
recommendations made in reports on Statute Law Revision by the Law
Commission and the Scottish Law Commission in pursuance of the duty laid
upon those Commissions to keep the law with which they are concerned under
review with a view to, inter alia, “the repeal of obsolete and unnecessary
enactments”. 9 Statute Law Revision Acts enacted up to 1966 were, as their long
titles made clear, concerned almost exclusively “to revise the statute law by
repealing obsolete, spent, unnecessary or superseded enactments”. 10 The Acts
promoted by the Law Commissions, however, have had as their objective “the
reform of the statute law by the repeal ... of certain enactments which (except in
8
Section 2, not proposed for repeal, corrected a mistake in a repeal effected by an earlier
Northern Ireland Act.
9 Law Commissions Act 1965, section 3(1).
10 The last in the series was the Statute Law Revision Act 1966 which, together with eight
other such Acts passed between 1953 and 1965, were wholly or partly repealed by the
Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1974 (c.22), s.1 and the Sch. Pt XI.
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