Provisional

Orders.

Provisional

Provisional Orders are, of these forms of departmental legislation, the nearest akin to private bills. They are made by a government department acting under statutory powers, and their object is to give effect to schemes or proposals of local bodies and companies, subject in the first instance to the approval of the department, and finally of Parliament.

These orders are arranged in groups by the department from which they proceed, and thus grouped are placed in schedules to Bills which come before the Houses of Parliament for confirmation. On the first reading of such bills they are referred to the examiners, mentioned in the previous section, to ensure that the Standing Orders are complied with. If opposition is offered to any Order, 'the confirming Bill is referred to a select committee and thereupon the opposed Order is treated as a private Bill: the preamble must be proved by evidence, and the promoters, though relieved from the payment of House fees, are liable to all other costs of procedure in Parliament besides the expense incurred in carrying the Order through the department 1.'

Illustrations of the subject of such procedure are Orders conferring powers to make piers, harbours, tramways, to employ electric lighting, to create local government or sanitary districts.

The Provisional Order, being to all intents a form of private bill legislation, has no force whatever until the confirming bill wherein it is scheduled passes both Houses of Parliament and receives the royal assent.

Briefly it may be said of Provisional Orders that they are Order Bill. made by a government department in pursuance of a statute; that they are scheduled in a Bill which goes through all the stages necessary to turn a Bill into an Act; but that unless objection is specifically raised they are not discussed, but are accepted by the House on the authority of the department from which they emanate.

1 Clifford, Private Bill Legislation, ii. 677

The following form exhibits the character of a Provisional Order and the Bill which confirms it :

A BILL

to confirm certain Provisional Orders of the Local Government Board relating to the city of Manchester, and the boroughs of Middleton and Stafford.

Whereas the Local Government Board have made the Provisional Orders set forth in the schedule hereto, under the provisions of the Public Health Act, 1875. And whereas it is requisite that the said Orders should be confirmed by Parliament:

Be it therefore enacted by the Queen's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same as follows:

I. The orders set out in the schedule hereto shall be and the same are hereby confirmed, and all the provisions thereof shall have full validity and force.

2. This Act may be cited as the Local Government Board's Provisional Orders Confirmation (No. 16) Act, 1889.

made

Other Orders are made every year which do not go through Orders the form of provisional orders. They are very numerous, and under often relate to important matters.

They vary in character.

statutory powers.

character,

Some are made by bodies constituted for a time and in- Their vested with statutory powers, such as the Public Schools or University Commissioners; others are made by government departments. Some are purely local in character, such as schemes made by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, or the orders which fix boundaries of parishes or confirm the bylaws of a municipal corporation: some are of a public and general character, such as the rules made by the judges under the provisions of the Judicature Acts; some stand midway between local or private and public or general enactments, such as the statutes made by University Commissioners for the University and Colleges under the Universities Act, 1877.

their duration,

their mode of enact.

ment.

They vary in duration.

Some are temporary, such as Orders made by a Committee of the Privy Council or by the Board of Agriculture touching the importation of cattle or the muzzling of dogs. Others are intended to be permanent, such as the charters which the Queen grants on the advice of the Privy Council creating corporations for objects prescribed and defined by Statute; such too are Orders for the discontinuance of burial grounds or fixing boundaries of parishes. Others are varied from time to time, such as the orders made by the Education department of the Privy Council.

They vary, lastly, in the procedure necessary to give them force.

Some must be submitted to the Privy Council, and, unless they are there questioned, must then be laid upon the tables of the two Houses for a fixed period of time. Such has been the procedure in the case of bodies created for a time but invested with powers of making ordinances of a permanent character. The Commissions which inquired into the condition of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and the Colleges therein, possessed the power to make statutes regulating those societies, but these statutes were required to be submitted to the Queen in Council, and, unless there petitioned against and disallowed, were after twelve weeks to be laid before both Houses of Parliament: then, unless during the ensuing twelve weeks either House addressed the Queen against the statutes, they were to be approved by Her Majesty in Council. The Commissioners appointed under the Public Schools Act of 1868 were not required to lay before Parliament the Statutes made for the regulation of the Schools in question unless made without the concurrence of the governing bodies of those schools.

Other Orders, again, are laid before Parliament without the intervention of the Privy Council: such are Rules of the Supreme Court made by the Judges, or certain regulations made by the Secretary of State and Council of India.

Other Orders, again, may be brought before Parliament, if the Queen in Council is addressed with that object. Such are schemes made by the Charity Commission acting under powers originally conferred upon the Endowed Schools Commissioners.

Lastly, the great mass of these Statutory Orders take effect at once, and are not required to be laid before the Queen in Council or before Parliament'.

1 The most important of the Statutory Rules and Orders for each year are now published annually, and the hitherto pathless wilderness of existing rules and orders has been made plain by the Index to the Statutory Rules and Orders in force on January 1st, 1891.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CROWN IN PARLIAMENT.

Topics to be dealt

with.

I HAVE now traced the progress of a bill up to the point at which it has received the assent of both the Houses, of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons in Parliament assembled. In order that it may become law it still requires the Royal assent: it requires to be enacted by the Queen's most excellent Majesty.'

We come, therefore, to the functions of the Crown in Parliament, and in dealing with them I do not propose to confine myself to the action of the Crown in legislation, but to consider in other matters the relations of the Crown to Parliament; and these fall under three heads.

First, we may regard the Crown as constituting Parliament and bringing it to an end.

Secondly, we may regard the Crown as communicating with Parliament while Parliament is sitting.

Lastly, we may regard the Crown as a party to legislation, as giving validity to laws proposed by Parliament, as turning a bill into an act.

§ 1. The Crown as constituting Parliament.

It is the Crown which constitutes Parliament; the Houses meet by Royal invitation; they assemble in the Royal Palace at Westminster1; they are opened by the Royal permission;

1 The Houses of Parliament are described in a Statute (see 30 & 31 Vict. c. 40) as Her Majesty's new Palace at Westminster, commonly called the