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Departmental responsibilities and strengths

The department are responsible for the policy and for providing the OPC team with instructions, and generally for briefing Ministers and ensuring that they are asked to take the necessary decisions in good time. OPC recognises that the department contribute particular strengths to a legislative project.

The strengths (on which the OPC team will rely) that are brought to a legislative project by the departmental Bill team include the following.

• The departmental lawyers will have specialist knowledge of the existing law¹⁰ and of the difficulties of applying it in practice.
• Other departmental officials can contribute further front-line knowledge of how the existing law works in practice, and how it is likely to work in future.
• Departments have the evidence on which to base proper policy-making and they have the knowledge of the factual background.
• The department are likely to be more familiar than members of the OPC team with the political context of a legislative proposal. They will know their Ministers’ minds and they will be informed about the likely reactions of other Government departments, the devolved administrations, Government backbench members, the Opposition, members of the House of Lords, stakeholders outside Government and Parliament, and the public.
• The departmental officials are themselves likely to be users of the legislation that is being prepared, and they will certainly have to brief their Ministers to defend it in Parliament: they can bring the users’ perspective to commenting on drafts.
• The department have a perspective over the whole project. A legislative project is often only part of a larger project to implement a policy proposal.
• The department will have provided the specialist skills and resources needed for the management of the Bill project.
• The department will have the benefit of input from members of the departmental team who are not focusing on the Bill (eg those who will be implementing it when it becomes an Act).

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10. Counsel in OPC are specialists in legislation. Although 1st PC, when creating a team, will usually try to allocate at least one drafter who has some previous experience of the area of law in question or of related issues, the OPC team still has to rely on the instructing team to provide a clear introduction to the structure and practical operation of the relevant existing law.