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We propose
4.
These amount to a net addition of 7 or 8 Bills, several of
which are likely to be lengthy and/or politically contentious and we must find offsetting deletions from the programme.
that these should be: the Insider
(Deregulation) Bill; the Welfare of Animals at Slaughter Bill;
and Money Laundering Bill; the Judicial
the Drug Trafficking
Pensions Bill; the Social
Friendly Societies Bill.
expectation that there
Dealing Bill; the Agriculture
Security Equal Treatment Bill and the
Public consultation has raised the
will be a Friendly Societies Bill next
Session and drafting of it is well advanced.
recommend that consultation
We therefore
should proceed this Summer on the
basis of a draft Bill, and if all the potential technical
difficulties can be ironed out, we would be prepared to contemplate adding this Bill back.
5.
Overall, these changes would leave us with a
programme of 23-24 Bills with quite a bit of politically attractive material.
This may be on the heavy side for a fifth Session, but we reckon
that it provides a satisfactory basis on which to take forward
policy clearance and drafting over the
provisional programme now proposed is set out in Annex A; while
next few months.
Annex B lists and comments on the deletions and additions.
The
6.
I have
written separately to colleagues significantly
affected by the changes and those whose proposals for further
additions FLG considered could not be accommodated. I should, however, draw attention in particular to the Hong Kong (Appeals) Bill which comes into this category, since it was specifically
mentioned at the Cabinet discussion in February. FLG noted the
Foreign Secretary's view that the ending of appeal rights to the
UK is an important part of the preparations for 1997 and must be in place well before then, but did not accept that legislation
next Session was essential. Despite his advice that the Bill was
unlikely to be as contentious as last Session's Hong Kong
legislation, we felt that there were risks associated with it
which should not be run in a fifth Session. We propose however
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