What is the Scrutiny Reserve?
A Scrutiny Reserve over a proposal means that the EU Committee is still conducting its scrutiny work. This may be because the Committee is conducting an inquiry, because it is planning to hold an evidence session to explore the proposal in more detail, or because it is waiting for further information from the Government about how a proposal may impact the UK.
The Government have committeed not to agree to any proposal in the EU Council of Ministers until the EU Committees of both Houses have completed their scrutiny work.
The House of Lords' Scrutiny Reserve Resolution is contained in Appendix L of the Companion to the Standing Orders and Guide to the proceedings of the House of Lords.
Find out more about ongoing scrutiny
In order to help Departments keep track of their scrutiny work, the Committee produces a document called Progress of Scrutiny every fortnight when the House is sitting. This shows the documents still under scrutiny and those that have been cleared. The latest edition is available on our
front page, and previous editions in the
Publications section.You can also find out more about the scrutiny being conducted by each Sub-Committee on their webpages.
How is the Scrutiny Reserve operated?
In practice, the Committee may grant a scrutiny waiver if a decision in the Council is imminent, but scrutiny has not been completed. This might happen during parliamentary recesses, or where the agreement in the Council relates to an element of the proposal that is not the focus of the Committee's scrutiny work.
If the Government were to agree to something in the Council without a waiver, this would result in an override of the scrutiny reserve. The Government have undertaken to explain any such scrutiny overrides as soon as possible.
Recent overrides
All recent overrides are logged in Progress of Scrutiny. Every six months, the Committee and the Cabinet Office review the list of recent overrides. The most recent list is available below. Once a list has been agreed, the Chairman of the Committee then asks a written question in order to bring the number of overrides to the attention of the House.
A list of overrides that occurred during the 2010-12 Session are available in the Committee's Report on 2010-12.