Legislative drafting: a fictional example
This fictional example is designed to give an insight into what the job of a legislative drafter looks like in practice.
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People sometimes assume that a legislative drafter’s job is simply to turn government policy into legal language. Finding the right words is important, but a bigger part of the job is subjecting the policy as communicated to us to a rigorous analysis, and working with departments to ensure that the provisions we develop achieve their policy aims in a coherent and effective way. The drafting process often throws up problems or policy questions that might not have been thought about before, and part of our job is to spot these and work through them with departments.
This fictional example shows how the start of the drafting process might work in practice. It contains a short set of instructions and the drafter’s first attempt at producing a clause. Also shown is the drafter’s covering note to the department, which includes a number of questions as well as commentary on why the drafter has made the choices they have. Drafting is an iterative process, so in practice there would be one or two further exchanges (at least) before the clause is settled.