Subordinate Legislation: Transparency and Accountability

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Thursday 21st February 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Lexden]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to their response to the report of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments Transparency and Accountability in Subordinate Legislation, published on 12 June 2018, what additional consideration they have given to the conclusions and recommendations in the report.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, the Government agree with the report’s main conclusions and continue to take steps to ensure that statutory instruments respect parliamentary processes and conventions, are drafted to a high standard and remain accessible to anyone at any time. The committee made one specific recommendation on the free issue procedure, and the Leader of the House of Commons continues to liaise with the National Archives to take that forward.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, diverting briefly from my campaign for justice for Sir Edward Heath, I put down this Question to draw attention to the work of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, of which I am a member, and to the expertise of our quite excellent lawyers, who go through every instrument line by line—indeed, word by word. The committee has been increasingly concerned recently about the number of drafting mistakes being made by departments. Will my noble friend pursue that issue? In the report referred to in the Question, stress is laid on the importance of avoiding delays in publishing instruments and laying them before Parliament. Will Ministers impress on departments the need to ensure that delays do not occur?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I pay tribute to my noble friend, those who with him work on the JCSI and the lawyers for their important if unglamorous work in scrutinising subordinate legislation, not least because their work rate has had to increase substantially due to the increased flow of SIs.

On corrections and errors, the Government have laid more than 1,500 SIs in the Session to date, not all related to Brexit. As of a recent report, the committee has for one reason or another reported on 136 of them. In nearly three-quarters of those cases, the Government either made a correction, provided further information or gave an undertaking to do so. On delays, of the 582 SIs considered by the committee since its report in June last year, only one has been reported for an unjustified delay and only one has been reported for an unjustified breach of the 21-day rule. Clearly, we hope to improve on both performances. More resources have been given to departments to improve their performance. I note that in its interim report on the current Session the committee states that,

“the overall percentage of errors in SIs has decreased”.

We are working hard to maintain progress.