INSTRUMENTS REPORTED
The Committee has considered the following instrument,
and has determined that the special attention of the House should
be drawn to it on the ground specified.
1 Draft Instrument : reported
for not yet having a power to make the Order
| Draft International Development Association (Fourteenth Replenishment) Order 2006
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1.1 The Committee draws the special attention of the House
to this instrument on the ground that there is, as yet, no power
to make the Order.
1.2 The purpose of the draft
Order is to enable the Secretary of State, on behalf of the Government,
to make payment of a further contribution to the International
Development Association not exceeding £1,430,000,000 pursuant
to arrangements made between the Government and the Association,
and to make payment of sums required to redeem any non-interest-bearing
and non-negotiable notes issued by the Secretary of State in payment
of the further contribution.
1.3 Section 11 of the International
Development Act 2002 (which repeals and re-enacts similar provisions
in the Overseas Development and Co-operation Act 1980) provides
that, where the Government becomes bound to make a payment to
a multilateral development bank, the Secretary of State may make
the payment if it is approved by an Order made by him with the
approval of the Treasury. No such Order can be made unless a draft
of it has been laid before and approved by the House of Commons.
Thus, the Secretary of State's power to make the Order in terms
of the draft will only arise when: (a) the Government becomes
bound to make the payment to the Association, and (b) the draft
Order is approved by the House. The voluntary memorandum submitted
by the Department for International Development and printed in
the Appendix explains that no obligation to make the payment will
arise until an Instrument of Commitment is deposited by the Government.
The draft Order has been laid at this time in order to secure
the approval of the House before the deposit of the Instrument
of Commitment, and to authorise the making of the Order in terms
of the draft which would justify making the payment. Paragraph
3.3 of the Department's memorandum contains an undertaking by
the Secretary of State that no Order will be made in terms of
the draft until the Government is bound to make the payment on
the deposit of the Instrument of Commitment.
1.4 The Committee has resolved
to follow its usual practice[1]
of reporting such draft Orders on the basis that, although there
is, as yet, no power to make the Order, there is no technical
reason for the House not to approve the draft Order: it should
merely be aware that it is acting, as on occasions in the past,
on a Ministerial undertaking. The Committee reports the draft
Order accordingly.
1 First, Second and Fourth Reports of the Select Committee
on Statutory Instruments (Session 2002-03), and the earlier Reports
of the Committee mentioned in the footnote at page 4 of the First
Report. Back
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