In
February 2000, MPs including Conservative Party leader William Hague tabled in
the House of Commons a Prayer of Annulment
for two Statutory Instruments, designed to remove the right to use
"supplementary indications".
Reproduced here are the supporting notes for this Prayer, referring
to statutory instruments SI 2001 Nos. 55 & 85:
"1)
The question of legality of the whole of the Metric Regulations, in compliance
with the relevant EC directives, as extended now by the Units of Measurement
Regulations 2001, is the sole issue whereupon depends the outcome of the
current trial at Sunderland Magistrates Court, whose judgement is to be
delivered on 9th April, subject to probable Appeal. The fundamental
constitutional principles at stake in this test case - that no Parliament can
bind its successors and that primary legislation (the Weights and Measures
Act), that has been amended by Parliament, cannot be superseded by mere
regulations deriving their authority from earlier legislation (the 1972
European Communities Act) - are so important as possibly to require ultimate
resolution by the House of Lords. If these Regulations are valid, as the
prosecution maintains, then Parliament has abolished itself and the UK
constitution is dead. If, however, this House agrees with the defence in
upholding those constitutional principles, then all these regulations are ultra
vires, null and void.
2)
Besides, since the law already demands that everything which has to be measured
for the purpose of sale must be measured and priced in metric units, voluntary
display of imperial equivalent as a "supplementary indication" is no more than
the provision of additional information, that cannot be made a criminal
offence. Indeed, its prohibition after 31st December 2009 would violate one or
more Articles of the EHCR.
3)
In any event, the derogation permitting "supplementary indications" has
previously been extended (a) from 1st January 1990 to 31st December 1999 and
(b) from 1st January 2000 to 31st December 2009, and would inevitably have to
be renewed yet again (as envisaged in 13.VI of the "Full Regulatory Impact
Study" accompanying the present Regulations), owing to:
- the
continuing unpopularity of the regulations among consumers and scale of
resistance among retailers,
- requirements
for trade with the USA, which shows no sign of abandoning dual marking, and
- the
possibility of a legal challenge ref: EHCR.
4)
The proposed Regulations would increase the damage to the economy already
caused by:
- the
dissatisfaction and confusion in domestic trade between suppliers compelled to
use metric and customers preferring imperial, and
- confusion in
trade with European and other countries arising from variations within the
metric system (use of non-SI units and of indigenous metric hybrid units).
5)
Further consolidation of the EU metric monopoly is unjustified, given that only
in the UK and Ireland is it enforced by criminal
penalties.
6)
In a single European market, uniformity of weights and measures is clearly a
lower priority than a single currency, yet the UK has still not even decided on
the merits of that!"