Insights

By Rachel Tan Xi’en, Associate Counsel, RevLaw LLC
April 2021

1. On 31 December 2021, Singapore launched a revised Statute Book comprising more than 500 Acts of Parliament numbering almost 27,000 pages.  This updates the law to make the language in legislation simpler and more understandable, and is the first universal revision of the law since 1985 undertaken by Singapore’s Attorney General’s Chambers and Law Revision Commission.

2. The rationale for this universal revision was set out in the Second Reading Speech by Minister for Law Mr Edwin Tong on the Statute Law Reform Bill on 5 January 2020.  Since the last Revised Edition of the Acts of Singapore was published, many new Acts have been enacted and amended.  From 2011 to 2015, 160 Bills were introduced in Parliament, of which 111 were amendment Bills.  From 2015 to 2020, 225 bills were introduced, of which 161 were amendment bills.  In short, there were over 100 new Bills added to the corpus of legislation in the past decade. 

3. Against this context, the Attorney General Chamber (AGC)’s Legislation Division undertook a public feedback exercise in 2013.  This initiative was named the Plain Laws Understandable Initiative (PLUS) which led to law drafters in Singapore consciously using plain English drafting techniques for new legislation. Of note, the PLUS Survey had a sizeable pool of 1058 respondents, with about half of the respondents being public administrators and regulators, and the other half comprising general public, legal professionals, non-law students and law students, the judiciary, academics, librarians and parliamentarians. 

4. The PLUS Survey yielded a report numbering over 190 pages.  Of note, one finding from the PLUS Survey illustrates the importance of language and words in making legislation clear and understandable to the layperson.  In the Survey, respondents were classified into three categories: a group comprising frequent users of legislation (defined as users who access written and online legislation almost daily to a few times a month), a group comprising moderate users of legislation (defined as users who use written and online legislation a few times a year), and a group comprising infrequent users of legislation (defined as users who either never use or use written or online legislation only once in a few years).  They were asked the following question:

Is there a difference in meaning between Statement A and Statement B?

Statement A: “A driver of a vehicle shall stop the vehicle when directed to by a police officer”

Statement B: “A driver of a vehicle must stop the vehicle when directed to by a police officer”

Majority of the frequent legislation users (62%) felt that the words shall and must conveyed the same meaning, but more than half of the moderate and infrequent legislation users felt that the two words had different meanings.  In this universal revision of the Singapore Statute Book, one change was directly enacted likely in response to the PLUS Survey – as law provisions now replace the word shall with must.  Based on the results of the PLUS Survey, this is one change that might make legislation more accessible to the layperson – that the language of mandatory provisions may be clearer to the ordinary man.

Effect on Litigants-In-Person and Pro Bono Practice

5. Since the aim of universal revision is to make laws more accessible to the layperson, one might ask if there is any practical impact on litigants-in-person when the language of statutes are made plainer.  In this article, we examine how making language plainer and how setting out a clear legislative history could assist litigants-in-person and pro bono practice.

6. First, we would make the argument that making the language of a statute plain particularly assists litigants-in-person facing criminal charges.  The text of a statute, be it the Penal Code, the Protection from Harassment Act, or otherwise, is the basis upon which a charge is made out.  Therefore, making the language of statutes plainer gives a first instance indication to the litigant-in-person of the crime he or she is being charged with.

7. In the course of pro bono practice, it is implicitly revealed that clients usually do not know where to look to find the legal answers, have no clue about the relevant legal procedures in civil or criminal law, and only have an intuitive or anecdotal understanding of what could happen in a particular case.  This means that if a client does not meet the means test for legal aid, he or she is very much by himself if he or she cannot afford to instruct a lawyer.  This is where the language of the statute can be important – for example, in the case of a criminal charge or a private prosecution, the litigant-in-person will have an immediate appreciation of which section of the charge he/she is facing, as the charge will particularise a relevant section of the statute, for example, a particular section of the Protection from Harassment Act.  It does not matter if the litigant-in-person is unable to understand the nuances behind the applicable legal threshold to make out a claim – at the very least, the litigant-in-person may access the statute online and read the relevant provision of the statute to understand what he/she is being charged with.  This is an important step as they will then be able to decide if they wish to go for legal representation and/or to defend the claim.

8. Naturally, we note that the act of making the language of the statute plainer typically does not import an adequate legal understanding to the defendant to defend a claim, as the interpretation of a particular statute turns on case law and the principles of statutory interpretation. Despite this, it is important for litigants-in-person to know why they are being sued and plain language can assist in that regard.

9. Second, there are many clients who are not proficient in English in pro bono practice.  These may be clients who are foreign domestic helpers, or persons who have dialect or Mandarin as their first language.  It is the norm for volunteer translators or staff from the instructing organisations, such as Justice without Borders, to translate and take instructions from the clients, or to explain the charges or potential claims in the client’s vernacular.  Here, making the language of the statute plainer goes some way in more effective communication with the client.  This is because it is often the case that the instructed lawyer will need to read from a particular statute, explain the statute to the translator, have it translated to the client, and then receive the translated instructions.  In this entire process, it is helpful if the provisions are made plainer.

10. Third, the revised version of the Statute Book sets out the legislative history of the Act in a very accessible manner.  It is a trite principle  that tracing the legislative history of an Act is important as it gives effect to the presumption that Parliament’s intention at the time of enactment endures until express parliamentary amendment is  concluded.  We illustrate the usefulness of clarity of legislative history with one example – in a recent case, one of our pro bono clients was charged under the Road Traffic Act 1961 with a particular offence.  Case law indicated that the particular provision in the Road Traffic Act had been amended by Parliament.  When we looked at the Road Traffic Act, we traced the legislative amendment of that particular Act.  We were able to make the argument that even though Parliament had meant to deter dangerous driving when it increased the penalty for that particular provision, Parliament did not impose a minimum disqualification period and we had looked to case law in making our submissions which examined cases from both pre-amendment to the current version of the Act.  This would give the court an accurate picture of the development of the provisions in the Act and a complete picture of the framework in which the court could make reference to in order pass its sentence.  Therefore, having the legislative history set out clearly does assist counsel in making comprehensive and accurate submissions to the court.  This is important for pro bono practice as even a small reduction in sentence based on a comprehensive argument will go some way to assist clients in regaining their livelihoods and in moving on with their lives.

Effect of Amendment on Interpretation

11. As with any revision or amendment to a statute, one further question that arises is whether the meaning of the statute inadvertently changes when words are changed, even if the changes are made to simply streamline the language.  According the principles of statutory interpretation in Singapore, it is clear that the meaning of the law will not be construed otherwise with this universal revision of the Statute Book.

12. The principles of statutory interpretation are set out in the case of Tan Cheng Bock v AG [2017] SGCA 50 and the Interpretation Act 1965.  Section 9A(1) of the IA is clear that the prevailing method of statutory interpretation in Singapore is the purposive approach.  This approach mandates that in interpreting statutory text, the purpose or parliamentary intention is crucial.  Then, in divining the purpose of the Act, a court may consider extrinsic material to ascertain the meaning of the provision.

13. From the Second Reading of the Statute Law Reform Bill (now the Statute Law Reform Act 2021), the simplification of the Statute Book is not intended to have any effect on the meaning of a particular Act.  The Statute Law Reform Act 2021 Clause 11(b) provides for an amendment to the Interpretation Act which states that where a revised edition of an Act appears to have expressed the same idea in a different form of words for the purpose of using a clearer style, the ideas are not to be taken to be different merely because different forms of words were used.  This means that there is clear water as to the purpose behind the universal revision – and arguments that are advanced as to the universal revision changing the meaning of statute would likely fail.

Conclusion

14. The impetus behind improving access to justice in Singapore is a positive development.  The universal revision of the Statute Book may be seen against the reforms proposed in the wider context of improving access to justice, including the various measures to simplify and streamline legal processes to design them with ultimate end users in mind, the revision of the rules of court in layman language, and the simplification of court forms and processes.  With these reforms, it is hoped that litigants-in-person, pro bono clients, and lawyers will be able to save time and costs, and settle their disputes in an amicable and expeditious manner.

*The author would like to thank the Centre for Asian Legal Studies (CALs) at the National University of Singapore’s Faculty of Law for the invitation to speak at its webinar on 21 March 2022 on the simplification of statutes and access to justice, which was the genesis of this article.