REVISED EDITION OF THE LAWS BILL

Order for Second Reading read. 5.53 p.m.

The Minister of State for Law and Home Affairs (Prof. S. Jayakumar): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, on behalf of my Minister, I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

As the House is aware, the present Edition of the Laws of Singapore was published more than 12 years ago and since then a great deal of new as well as amending legislation had been enacted. It has, therefore, become a matter of some urgency that a new Edition of the Laws should be prepared and published as soon as possible incorporating all the changes and amendments in our laws that have taken place during this period. It is important that our laws should be kept up to date and made more easily accessible to the legal profession, the public service, the business community and the general public. Accordingly, this Bill seeks to provide the necessary legislative sanction for the preparation and adoption of a new system of law revision whereby our laws can be continually revised and kept up to date.

A Law Revision Commission was constituted in March last year and has already embarked on the task of preparing the new Revised Edition of the Laws. This Bill is the result of the recommendations of the Committee new Revised Edition of the Laws. Secondly, there will be a continuous revision of the Laws on an annual basis to keep the new Edition up to date.

The new system envisages that the Acts will be printed in the form of loose booklets for insertion in appropriate binders. This will be advantageous since the Edition will be kept up to date by the removal of those Acts which have been extensively or substantially amended and the substitution of fresh booklets incorporating the amendments. New booklets will also be issued in respect of Acts subsequently passed dealing with new subject matters. Further, it would avoid the necessity of reproducing in the publication of a subsequent Revised Edition of the Laws a great number of Acts which have not been amended and are not likely to require amendments, thus providing considerable saving in costs by dispensing with the unnecessary reprinting of unamended Statutes. Another advantage is that there will no longer be any need for a major and comprehensive revision of our laws after every interval of 10 or 15 years as previously has been the case. Instead once the new Revised Edition of the Laws is completed and published, there will be a continuous revision to be carried out annually whereby fresh booklets will be issued for new Acts or existing Acts which have been substantially amended.

Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, the innovations contained in this Bill should make it easier for our laws to be kept up to date and should help users of our statutes to ascertain the current statutory position on the law relating to any particular subject more easily than before.

Sir, I beg to move.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole House.

The House immediately resolved itself into a Committee on the Bill. - [Prof Jayakumar].

Bill considered in Committee; reported without amendment; read a Third time and passed.