Information about bills
36. The ancillary publications which accompany bills
are important because it is often to these documents, rather than
to the bill itself, that the general public will turn when trying
to find out what a proposed piece of legislation does. Although
some progress has been made in making the language of bills themselves
more readily comprehensible, it is still often the case that a
plain-English summary of a bill's provisions, such as the Explanatory
Notes or a less technical evaluation of its intended effects,
such as the Regulatory Impact Assessment, will be more attractive
to the general reader than the more technical and precise language
of the bill itself.
37. Each Government bill is accompanied by three
supporting documents:
a) The Explanatory Notes (ENs), which were introduced
in 1998, following a recommendation from this Committee.[48]
They replaced the Explanatory Memorandum, which was printed on
the front of the bill and Notes on Clauses, which were produced
by the department in charge of the bill and distributed to standing
committee members (sometimes in piecemeal fashion throughout the
consideration of the bill). ENs are ordered to be printed by
each House when the bill is introduced, with a revised version
being prepared for the second House, reflecting the changes made
by the first House.
b) The Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA), which
was also introduced in 1998. This is prepared by the department
in charge of the bill. It contains a statement of the purpose
and intended effect of the bill; a record of the consultation
undertaken within government and outside; a list of all the options
for change (as well as the option of doing nothing); a list of
the sectors and groups most likely to be affected by the proposal,
the benefits and costs, a Small Firms Impact Test; a competition
assessment; and a note on enforcement, sanctions and monitoring.[49]
RIAs are not peculiar to bills. They are prepared for all policy
changes including statutory instruments and non-legislative policy
changes.[50]
c) The Delegated Powers Memorandum prepared for
the House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee.
This identifies every provision for delegated legislation in
the bill, explains its purpose, explains why the power has been
left to delegated legislation rather than included in the bill,
and explains the choice of Parliamentary scrutiny to which it
will be subject (affirmative, negative or no Parliamentary procedure).[51]
These are the documents which the government is required
to produce for each bill. In each individual case, there may
be a range of other supporting documentation, such as a white
paper, and the House may also have made a contribution, with a
select committee report, either on a draft bill or on the general
policy area.
38. Parliament has no ownership of RIAs; they are
produced within government under the oversight of the Cabinet
Office. An RIA is produced in three stages: an initial RIA, which
accompanies civil servants' submissions to their own ministers
seeking agreement to a proposal; a partial RIA, which is submitted
with any proposal from the lead department requiring agreement
from elsewhere in government and is accompanied by a public consultation
exercise; and a full RIA, which is placed in the libraries of
both Houses when a bill is presented.
39. A study by the National Audit Office in June
this year highlighted the importance of Regulatory Impact Assessments
in providing 'a comprehensive assessment of proposals for legislative
change'.[52] The NAO
noted that the expansion of the RIA process to include an assessment
of the impact of proposed legislation on legal aid, health, race-equality,
sustainable development and 'rural proofing' had improved its
usefulness to policy-makers. However, the growing importance
of RIAs is not always matched by the use that Parliament makes
of them during the legislative process. We
recommend that, rather than simply being deposited in the Libraries
of the two Houses, copies of the Regulatory Impact Assessment
relating to each bill should be made available in the Vote Office
and handed out with every copy of the bill and explanatory notes.
40. The Delegated Powers Memorandum is prepared primarily
for the benefit of the House of Lords Delegated Powers Committee.
It must be sent to that Committee when or before the bill is
introduced (in the case of a Lords bill), or when or before it
leaves the Commons (in the case of a Commons bill). They are
then published with the relevant report of the Committee. This
means that the Memorandum is often not available in time for the
Commons stages of a bill, though the Health Bill team from the
Department of Health suggested to us that it might be useful if
it were available to the Commons.[53]
Given that the Government has undertaken to produce these Memoranda
anyway, and that they could be useful for Members considering
a bill, we recommend that
the Government undertake to deposit copies of the Delegated Powers
Memorandum in the Libraries of both Houses at the same time as
a bill is published. In the case of bills which start in the
Lords, it may be necessary to produce a revised version of the
Memorandum for the Commons, if the bill is significantly amended
in the Lords.
48 Explanatory Material for Bills, Second Report
from the Modernisation Committee, Session 1997-98, HC 389. Back
49
Guidance on the production of RIAs is published by the Cabinet
Office Better Regulation Executive at: www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/regulation/ria. Back
50
Command Papers listing all the RIAs produced in a six-month period
are from time to time laid before the House.See Regulatory Impact
Assessments: 1st January to 30th June 2005, Cm 6685 (November
2005). Back
51
Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee: Guidance for
Departments (April 2005).Available at: www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/DPRRguide.pdf. Back
52
Evaluation of Regulatory Impact Assessments 2005-06, National
Audit Office, HC 1305, Session 2005-06 (June 2006). Back
53
Q 115. Back
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