Part of Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill – in a Public Bill Committee am 5:00 pm ar 21 Mehefin 2005.
I rise to make another pedantic point, but such things are rather important when framing legislation. Subsection (2)(b) uses the word “thinks”, but the word seems rather ambiguous. Who is to determine whether something has been thought? It ought to be a word such as “determines”, otherwise someone may think that a thought has taken place and then enact it. That may lead to expenditure. However, others may think that it had not been thought; in other words, that it had never been determined in anything other than through the thought process. Although it is pedantic point, it is an accurate one.
The second one is about the use of the word “special”. Again, it is a rather broad and strange term to have used. The second use of the word may have some logic, as a specialist has some relationship to “professional”.
I make these points because of the danger of ambiguity, although I chose not to raise one or two examples in previous clauses that are open to some ambiguity. If ambiguity is built into legislation, problems may arise unnecessarily about what Parliament intended.