Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether his Department has deprioritised any Statutory Instruments in relation to the UK leaving the EU; and if he will publish the criteria his Department uses to deprioritise those Instruments.

Our objective has always been to have a functioning statute book in place by Exit Day and to ensure that the most critical secondary legislation was made by this point.

Each SI was carefully considered on a case-by-case basis to assess the impact of it not being in force on exit day, which informed scheduling decisions. These considerations and assessments have meant that the Government has been able to lay the critical secondary legislation required before we exit the EU.

In the case of the Electronic Communications (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019, the department accepted the recommendation of the European Statutory Instruments Committee that the SI should use the affirmative procedure, notwithstanding that this would mean the SI would be unlikely to come into force on exit day (as defined, at that time, as 29 March 2019). This was because it was not essential that the provision made by the SI be in force from exit day, principally because it made very minor technical changes or revoked EU law which would be redundant if retained on the UK's statute book.

The laying of EU Exit SIs allows Parliament to fulfil its essential scrutiny role. The exact nature of this scrutiny, and the steps required before an SI completes its passage, is dependent on the type of SI. The Government remains confident of passing the necessary legislation required to ensure a functioning statute book by exit day.