It is by now well known that Scotland has legislated so as to give effect to the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration,1 while the Departmental Advisory Committee on Arbitration Law (The Mustill Committee) has emphatically rejected such a step for England, Wales and Northern Ireland.2 The Mustill Committee felt that there were a number of good reasons why the Model Law should not be adopted: (i) the undesirability of introducing multiple regimes into the law of arbitration;3 (ii) the desirability of preserving the limited right of appeal against an arbitrator’s decision on a point of law following the Arbitration Act 1979, which is seen as maintaining “a harmonious and beneficial relationship between the Commercial Court and the process of arbitration”;4 and (iii) (most importantly of all) the fact that England already has an extremely sophisticated and highly developed body of arbitration law, based on statute, case-law, writings and usages, which is familiar to practitioners and which would have to be discarded to accommodate the Model Law.5

Indeed, the Mustill Committee was much impressed by the fact that none of the states which had a developed system of arbitration law had evinced any enthusiasm for adopting the Model Law.6 The Committee was of the view that the Model Law held little attraction for any such state and offered the following damning judgment as to the type of jurisdiction which might see a potential benefit in adopting the Model Law:7

At the same time, the Scottish Advisory Committee on Arbitration Law (the