INTRODUCTION

I was very grateful for the opportunity to speak at the Cambridge conference of the Commission for European Family Law in April 2010. The CEFL conferences are always a wonderful opportunity to share ideas and culture; on this occasion we discussed some peculiarly English problems, with the benefit of the insights and inspiration of a wide range of European colleagues.

My own remit was to discuss one of the current projects of the Law Commission for England and Wales. The Law Commission is an independent, non-political statutory body, set up by the Law Commissions Act 1965; our task is to keep the law under review and to recommend reform to Government. Like the CEFL, therefore, we have no power to make legislation happen. But we are accountable for our use of public funds; we proceed by the widest possible consultation and take into account research that provides us with statistically significant measures of public opinion where that is available. One of our highest priorities is to assess the impact of our proposals and to produce solutions that combine practicability with acceptability.

We pursue projects on individual areas of the law that seem to us – following consultation – to be ripe for reform, and to be suitable for the Law Commission’s work in terms of our resources and expertise. While we do not take on highly political issues (such as immigration or the death penalty), we have worked in some very high profile areas of the law. In family law, our work led to the Children Act 1989 (which remains the primary statute on child law) and the Family Law Act 1996 (domestic violence and divorce reform). Our working method generally is to research the law relevant to a particular project and to publish a consultation paper, in which we seek views on provisional proposals. We then assess the responses of consultees, and finally produce a Report with recommendations, and usually also a draft Bill which can then be adopted by Government if our recommendations are accepted. We work closely with Government departments during the passage through Parliament of any of our Bills; overall, since our foundation, around 75% of our projects have led to acceptance of our recommendations and thence to legislation.