In Butt and Castle's view,⁵ these factors have operated as a hindrance to "innovative legal drafting". However, it is important to emphasise that these are all legitimate and very real factors of influence. They cannot be written off or simply ignored. In response to a letter from Martin Cutts a plain language expert, Peter Graham the then UK First Parliamentary Counsel, articulated the reality:

"We do not needlessly make things complicated: we have as great a love of the English language as the next man: we do draft against a background of judicial decisions, rules of interpretation, the basic premise that statute law is an intrusion into the common law and, perhaps most important, the salutary rule that all enactments are construed against the Crown (using that expression in its widest sense) and in favour of the subject.".⁶

The reasons why legislation needs to be to be expressed in a precise and accurate manner are well established. This point was succinctly expressed by another UK First Parliamentary Counsel⁷ in a memorandum submitted to the Select Committee on the Modernisation of the House of Commons:⁸

"A Bill's sole reason for existence is to change the law. The resulting Act is the law. … A consequence of this unique function is that a Bill cannot set about communicating with the reader in the same way in which other forms of writing do. It cannot use the same range of tools. In particular, it cannot repeat the important points simply to emphasise their importance or safely explain itself by restating a proposition in different words. To do so would risk creating doubts and ambiguities that would fuel litigation. As a result, legislation speaks in a monotone and its language is compressed. It is less easy for readers to get their bearings and to assimilate quickly what they are being told than it would be if conventional methods of helping the reader were freely available to the drafter.".