House of Lords Select Committee on the Merits of Statutory Instruments

The Committee examines the merits of any statutory or other legislative instrument which is subject to parliamentary procedure. The Committee draws to the "special attention of the House" any instrument laid in the previous week which it considers may be interesting, flawed or inadequately explained by the Government. The Committee's current full terms of reference provide more detail.

The Committee meets every Tuesday when the House is sitting and aims to publish its report the following Thursday. It normally comments on statutory instruments within 12-15 days of their being laid before Parliament. This maximises the scope for a Member of the House then to pursue the matter by asking a question or tabling a motion for debate within the 40 day ''prayer'' period for rejecting negative instruments.

What happened next? A study of Post-Implementation Reviews of secondary legislation

In this Inquiry report published on 12 November, the Committee found that most departments are failing properly to examine whether each significant piece of secondary legislation is achieving the outcome intended for it. Departments do not know whether their legislation is effective, and are missing opportunities to improve the quality of both their policy formulation and delivery methods. In particular departments need to do more to evaluate how the original instrument performed before bringing forward amending regulations.

The NAO conducted a benchmarking study for us: it found that 46% of the sampled SIs with Impact Assessments from 2005 had not been subject to any evaluation of their effectiveness after 4 years, and only 29% had received a full post-implementation review. Although this figure is rather distorted because a few Departments seem much better geared up for the process than the rest. 

The report’s main recommendations are:

  • Government should take a more active role in supervising both Impact Assessment (IA)  and Post-implementation Review(PIR) systems to ensure that the approach is appropriate and the reviews are done. The formats for both should be more closely aligned in terms of content and method.
  • Departments should ensure that all IAs include a clear statement of the  baseline position against which the change introduced by the legislation can later be measured to assess whether the success criteria have been met.
  • Departments should propose arrangements for PIR in the consultation exercise on the draft regulations that are appropriate and proportionate to the content of the regulations. This applies just as much to public sector legislation as to that which affects business.
  • All PIRs/evaluations on Statutory Instruments should be published online, alongside the original IA.
  • Each Department should establish and maintain an online register of its legislative portfolio to track PIR commitments, aid consolidation, and also to smooth transition when machinery of government changes are made

Latest Reports on Statutory Instruments

Thirty-first report of session 2008-09
(Published 13 November 2009)
Contains an analysis of the work of the Committee for the 2008-09 Session and includes Correspondence on the:

  • PROCEEDS OF CRIME ACT 2002 (REFERENCES TO FINANCIAL INVESTIGATORS) (AMENDMENT) ORDER 2009 (SI 2009/2707)

The Management of Secondary Legislation

A statistical analysis of the number of SIs considered in a session is generally included in our last report of each session.  Further details are available in Inquiry and End of Session Reports.

This also includes material on our previous overarching reviews of how the legislative process is working, and our more recent Inquiry  into the Cumulative impact of statutory instruments on schools.

Related links

OPSI Statutory Instruments and Explanatory Memoranda
The Government's Office of Public Sector Information publishes all statutory instruments on this site, together with an explanatory memorandum (a short, plain-English explanation of what the instrument does) for each instrument.

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