A tiny example of what’s wrong with the way our legislation is written

The Bank of England Act 1998 requires the Bank of England to “publish minutes of the [Monetary Policy Committee] meeting before the end of the period of 6 weeks beginning with the day of the meeting”.

It could have said “publish minutes of the meeting within 6 weeks of the day it took place”. Shorter, clearer and with the same meaning.

Does this sort of clunky verbosity matter? The answer is yes, because it quickly adds up, when sentence is piled on sentence, to hard to understand legislation that is the cause of mistakes, misunderstandings and argument.