move to cut "red tape", the Committee asked for extra safeguards to avoid potential "abuse" of the powers in the Bill. Earlier in January, the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution wrote to the Lord Chancellor to express its concern that the Bill could markedly alter the respective and long-established roles of Ministers and Parliament in the legislative process, and its disappointment that the bill had not been published in draft. The Bill has been criticised heavily in articles and correspondence published in the press. In The Times, journalist Daniel Finkelstein dubbed it the "Bill to End All Bills", and Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament David Howarth called it the "Abolition of Parliament Bill". The Green Party passed a motion at their conference against the Bill, saying "the Bill threatens to shatter the foundations of democracy". The Bill has also been criticised by legal professionals. The Law Society published a briefing note before its Second Reading, expressing concerns that safeguards were too weak, that secondary legislation should not be able to authorise further subordinate legislation, that the powers of non-Ministers acting under delegated powers were not restricted, and that there was no procedure for Parliament to challenge use of the Bill. In a letter published in The Times, six professors of law at the University of Cambridge wrote that the Bill could be used to create a new offence of incitement to religious hatred, punishable by two years' imprisonment; curtail or abolish trial by jury; introduce house arrest; allow the prime minister to sack judges; rewrite the law on nationality and immigration; and "reform" Magna Carta, saying that "It would, in short, create a major shift of powers within the State, which in other countries would require an amendment to the constitution; and one in which the winner would be the executive, and the loser Parliament." Joshua Rozenberg wrote in The Telegraph that Clifford Chance had pointed out that the Bill "usurps the power of Parliament", and David Pannick QC wrote in The Times that the Bill "would confer astonishingly broad powers on ministers to make the law of the land". Barristers Sir Jeremy Lever QC and George Peretz pointed out in a letter to The Times on 23 February 2006 that the Solicitor General told Parliament on 13 July 1972 that the similar powers in section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972 would only be used