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A private bill is an act considered or acted upon by a legislature that helps a single individual, group of individuals, or corporate entity, by affording relief from another law, granting a unique benefit, or relieving the individual from legal responsibility for some allegedly wrongful act. This is unlike a public bill, which proposes a law which will apply to all persons within its jurisdiction. Private bills developed in the United Kingdom as a means of obtaining redress from a specific wrong or obtaining a benefit that was not otherwise available through statute or the common law. (Divorces, citizenship, and corporate charters were often granted this way.) The term should not be confused with a private member's bill, which in the Westminster system is a public bill proposed by an individual parliamentarian rather than the government. Technically speaking, a private bill is a proposal; if it becomes law, it becomes a private act or in the UK since 1798, a local and personal act. There are many examples of such private legislation in democratic countries, although the use of such bills has changed over time. In the United Kingdom Parliament, private bills were used in the nineteenth century to create corporations, grant monopolies and give individuals rights in excess of the public law. Their most frequent use was for the construction of railways, canals and other works projects, and by local authorities. Their use has become more limited in the twentieth century as statute law (principally the Transport and Works Act 1992) and statutory instruments have enabled many previous situations to be dealt with through other legislative mechanisms. They are still sometimes used in the UK for purposes such as corporate restructurings, where the corporations in question have particularly complicated legal histories.
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