The Arbitration Act 1979 received the Royal Assent on Apr. 4, 1979, and came into force on Aug. 1, 1979.2 The Act represents yet a further legislative step in the progressive statutory development of English arbitral law since the consolidation effected by the Arbitration Act 1950, which continues to be the principal en actment.3 Like its predecessors the 1979 Act is a partial measure and introduces improvements and amendments only to certain aspects of the contemporary arbitral law. Many would have wished of the Legislature a bolder policy and with the opportunity taken to utilise the 1979 enactment as a more comprehensive engine of reform. From its incipiency, however, the Act had the more limited aim of giving the force of law to certain of the recommendations of the Commercial Court Committee made in its Report on Arbitration in 19784 and any ambitions which may have been harboured in some quarters that the Act might be made so as to serve a wider function were frustrated by the fall of the then Labour Government as the Bill was progressing through Parliament. In the result the Bill was only saved by the all-party support which existed for it as originally drafted and any extension of its terms was therefore politically impossible.

The broad effect of the 1979 Act is threefold. First, and of greatest significance, the Act repeals the former methods of judicial review with regard to questions of law and initiates a new scheme of appeal based on reasoned awards. The new right of appeal is limited and restricted to questions of law. In association with the right to appeal there is vested in the High Court a power to compel an arbitrator or umpire to give reasons for his award. The concept of a consultative case is retained by the Act and provision is made for a limited right to make application to the High Court to determine a preliminary point of law in the course of a reference. Of major significance the Act severs the former entrenchment of the right to judicial review and lays down a framework whereunder parties to an arbitration agreement may by written agreement contract out of the new judicial review provisions under the Act. Secondly, the Act introduces a measure aimed at giving greater force to the interlocutory directions or