62 126 I attended, in 1996,  a conference on the drafting of tax legislation. The deputy head of the United Kingdom Revenue Board gave an address in which he described some of the features of the tax rewrite project that had just been embarked upon by the British  Government.  He  spoke  to  an  audience  principally  comprising  lawyers engaged  in  the  drafting  of  legislation,  most  of  whom  were  disciples  of  plain language legislative drafting. He said the rewrite was not driven by a desire for clear and  accessible  legislation  for  its  own  sake,  or  because  British  tax  law  was complicated and needed to be rewritten in plain language because it was nicer that way. What drove the rewrite and the commitment of substantial funding was the need  to  protect  the  revenue  base.  In  other  words,  it  was  all  about  money,  not aesthetics. This message came as a shock to some of his audience. 127 The greater the importance attached by government to effecting policy change, the more likely it is that the legislation required to bring about that change will get the necessary attention within government and Parliament. The result is that the law it likely to get updated only if there are particular policy objectives driving the change. Substantive modernisation of the law is a casualty of this phenomenon. 128 If the processes of consolidation and reprinting are limited in what they can achieve in improving accessibility and more extensive reform depends on political will, how can the law be updated? At various times it has been proposed to rewrite the Social Security Act 1964  without making any policy change on the basis that it has been amended often, lacks coherence, and is difficult for users. It has never happened. Rewriting the Income Tax Act 1994 has taken about 10 years. The Family Courts Rules 2002 sit somewhere between consolidation and a pure form rewrite. The new rules incorporated into a single set of rules, all the rules made under the various statutes applying in the Family Court. Rewriting the Family Courts Rules has also taken  about  10  years  and  at  times  involved  up  to  5  legislative  drafters.  These examples illustrate the level of resource and time involved.