EXTERNAL AUTHORITY OVER LOCAL LEGISLATION

So much for securing unrestricted authority to the legislature of a newly independent country. The second need is to remove from its legislative process all means of intervention by the country upon which it has been dependent, such as the reservation of Bills, dis­allowance of laws, and reserved powers.

It may seem surprising that in the Statute of Westminster there was no mention of powers of disallowance, which have never been repealed except by the Union of South Africa. But the power has been quite lifeless for a very long time and it is of no consequence that the corpse remains on the statute book.

With the new Members of the Commonwealth, however, all powers of supervision or control by the United Kingdom have been abolished. For India and Pakistan, this was done by the Indian Independence Act. But since, in the great majority of cases, pre-independence constitutions are contained in Orders in Council, Letters Patent and Royal Instructions, the removal of powers of control or intervention does not, in the main, require an Act of Parliament. It is sufficient to amend or replace the existing instruments. In the case of Ceylon, the relevant parts of the Constitution Order in Council were deleted by an amending Order. All the other countries have had entirely new con­stitutions from which external authority has, of course, been omitted.

There are, however, a few statutory controls which need the attention of Parliament. I have mentioned those disposed of by sections 5 and 6 of the Statute of Westminster. Then there is the matter of Colonial Stock Even when a dependent territory reaches an advanced stage of self-government, it is necessary, under United Kingdom law, if the Government of the country concerned wish their stock to remain on the list of trustee securities, for them to have placed on record their opinion that legislation which appears to the United Kingdom Government adversely to affect the rights of holders of their stock would properly be disallowed. On the grant of inde­pendence that becomes impossible but the difficulty is overcome by extending to newly independent countries the Colonial Stock Act, 1934, which substitutes, for the power of disallowance, an undertaking,

confirmed by statute, that legislation adversely affecting the rights of stockholders will not be submitted for assent except after agreement with the United Kingdom Government; and that, if attention is called to such legislation after it has been enacted, the Government of the country concerned will take steps to amend it.