The Academies Bill

The fast-track process in Parliament is for extenuating circumstances only, to allow Parliament to respond quickly to time-critical events particularly those related to terrorism. So how has our new coalition overlords apparently decided to use this process? To push through the academies bill; oh yeah really time-critical there.

It's worth reading the report from the House of Lords into fast-track legislation. It points out that some legislation proceeds quickly simply due to the simple nature and lack of interest/querying, however this is a natural rather than a forced process.

In this case the proposed Bill is not new, in that its creation was unforeseen; it does not close loopholes in existing legislation; it does not deal with treaty matters, it does not deal with terrorism, it is not time-critical,  and isn't being introduced due to public pressure.

As that covers most of the reasons for past fast-tracked legislation, one has to wonder exactly why the pressure is on for this to go the same way.