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Last updated: 07 May 2010
This section of the instructions should describe why it is necessary to legislate. Different circumstances will require this section to be prepared in different ways, according to what seems likely to be most helpful to the OPC team.
Where some new structure is required, this section will be relatively straightforward, amounting to no more than a relatively detailed description of the objective of the legislation, for which there is as yet no legal provision. Nevertheless it is useful to keep in mind, that even a request for an entirely new structure is only necessary if there is nothing in the existing law already that it would be practicable to use for the same purpose or to the same effect.
An example of such a case would be something along the following lines—
“The
Government wishes to establish a new body to carry out functions in
relation to X/to take over some of the functions of the A body in
relation to X and to carry out some new functions. Provision needs to
be made for the winding up and dissolution of the A body. Various
provisions will need to provide for the establishment and governance of
the new body and it will need to be given the powers and duties that
are set out below.”
In other cases, this section of the instructions will involve more analysis. An example might be where the department want a regulator to control a certain sort of activity under licensing powers. The existing mechanisms used by the regulator eg the power to set conditions and the power to modify conditions may present obstacles to what the department intend. In such a case the instructions would set out the department’s objective and would then explain how the existing mechanisms are inadequate to achieve it, or prevent it.
