Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department carried out an impact assessment on the introduction of an affirmative statutory instrument to amend the Public Order Act 2023.

On Thursday 27 November 2025, the Home Office laid an affirmative Statutory Instrument in Parliament to amend Section 7 and Section 8 of the Public Order Act (POA) (2023). This will amend the list of key national infrastructure within Section 7 of the POA, to add the life sciences sector and define the life sciences sector in Section 8 of the POA.

A full impact assessment has not been produced for this instrument. However, the Economic Note makes frequent use of the original Impact Assessment produced for the Public Order Bill in 2022. The Economic Note also contains a specific impact test for statutory Equalities Duties in which it assesses there to be no expected impacts on any protected characteristics as an outcome of these regulations.

An Explanatory Memorandum and an Economic Note are available alongside this instrument at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2025/9780348277029/resources

The Impact Assessment conducted for the Public Order Bill in 2022 is available here: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-03/0008/Impact%20Assessment%20-%20Public%20Order%20Bill%20-%2017May22.PDF