AN AMENDMENT to a Guernsey law has been rushed through following a UK court ruling which severely curtailed the police’s ability to question suspected criminals after releasing them on bail.

STATES members will be recommended not to introduce a freedom of information law, it is understood.

THE way new legislation is scrutinised needs to be improved, a lawyer has said.

In this column yesterday, we drew attention to the shortcomings of the Legislation Select Committee as an element of scrutiny. Today in the Guernsey Press the chairman of that committee makes the same point: ‘We’re not really a parliamentary committee, we are a proofreading committee…’.

A DELEGATION of States members is to question the Law Officers about why so few cases of alleged child abuse go before the courts.

ANYONE wading through the 258 pages of the first annual review of the States Strategic Plan will be struck by the positive language adopted in the Billet d’Etat expressing how corporate governance is to be improved, how government is to become more joined-up and how the Assembly will act more corporately.

THE Policy Council will from next year set Law Officers quarterly targets for drafting legislation.

WHEN the then latest revisions to Guernsey’s archaic and labyrinthine anti-Sunday trading regulations were going through the States in 2002, this newspaper had no hesitation in branding it the dog’s breakfast law.

THE UK Government yesterday denied it had ever deliberately delayed processing legislation from Guernsey or the other Crown Dependencies.

THE UK Government has stepped in to restrain Guernsey’s lawmaking powers.