Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many statutory instruments are being prepared by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) but have not yet been laid before either House of Parliament; and of those, how many DEFRA started to prepare (1) within the last six months, (2) within the last seven to 12 months, (3) within the last 13 to 24 months, and (4) over 24 months ago.

In the next 14 months we currently expect to lay around 95 SIs, which will be required to convert over 850 individual pieces of EU related legislation into domestic law by 29 March 2019. We will also continue our programme of business as usual SIs, of which around 75-80 are laid in any one year. Ministers keep the policy priorities to be taken forward under constant review, and this will be particularly important as we manage the legislation introduced before Parliament in the period before we leave the EU.

We do not hold information on the date on which individual policies are initiated and which may subsequently result in regulatory proposals.