Spring clean of defunct laws

Mar 19 2008

A "spring clean" of hundreds of meaningless and defunct laws, some dating back more than 300 years, is being started in the House of Lords.

A second reading of the 18th Statute Law (Repeals) Bill was to look at proposals to scrap 260 obsolete Acts of Parliament from the statute book.

They include a law from 1792 which made it an offence to give a false character reference for a servant or to impersonate a master or mistress.