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It's my pleasure to
welcome you to this international plenary on plain language progress around the
world.
This is not the
post-lunch siesta slot. Please don't even think of having a quiet snooze at the
back. We have some cracking speakers for you, from all corners of the known
world. Their every sentence has been carefully crafted for clarity, laconicism
and pith. However, we have only 90 minutes between us, and there are nine
speakers, so the more mathematically endowed will know this means 7.5 minutes
each…plus a bit of time for questions.
I want to lead off
by saying a few words about what's been happening in the UK and EU. First, four
recent highlights from the UK.
| 1. |
Last year every household received an
apparently clear and well-designed census form that had benefited from
extensive pre-testing of the questions and wide public consultation on wording.
As a form, it looked like a success, and it will be fascinating to see whether
people coped with the form better than the 1991 version, which was widely
reviled. |
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| 2. |
Since 1995 our tax ministry has been
rewriting 6,000 pages of tax law into plainer English and the new texts are now
being enacted. There is also a new page layout for these texts, using better
navigational aids, clearer type and more white space. The work has been done by
a 40-strong team led by legislative drafters from the parliamentary counsel's
office, and it responds to cries of anguish from disenchanted tax and
accountancy professionals, and outsiders like me. So well done the Inland
Revenue: now we all just love to pay those taxes you impose. |
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