4: Conclusion
39. Over the last 12 months, this House has demonstrated
in its debates and resolutions that it objects to poorly prepared
secondary legislation: Home Information Packs and the Single Farm
Payment stand out. The House even went so far as to reject the
draft Gambling (Geographical Distribution of Casino Premises Licences)
Order 2007[27]. Since
our original report, the Joint Committee on Conventions has affirmed
the role of the House:
"There are situations in which it is consistent
both with the Lords' role in Parliament as a revising chamber,
and with Parliament's role in relation to delegated legislation,
for the Lords to threaten to defeat an SI. For example… where
special attention is drawn to the instrument by the Joint Committee
on Statutory Instruments or the Lords Select Committee on the
Merits of SIs." [28]
We will continue to be robust in our scrutiny of
the secondary legislation that the Government presents, and draw
significant or flawed instruments to the attention of the House.
While the Government must be able to get its legislation, we encourage
the House to develop its proper and proportionate role of challenging
bad policy, a necessary incentive to improve practice by the executive.
40. If the Government wish to maintain that each
Secretary of State is responsible for his or her own secondary
legislation, we consider that each Secretary of State should demonstrate
that responsibility by ensuring that the senior management of
the Department systematically check the quality of the secondary
legislation which he or she makes. If not, Ministers could find
themselves increasingly challenged by Parliament: the Government's
experience with the instruments above shows that the House is
not afraid to challenge poor policy and practice.
41. Partly due to our work on Home Information
Packs, gambling and the ContactPoint children's database, the
Merits Committee has attracted a higher media profile this year.
The higher profile has increased unsolicited submissions of evidence
on SIs from stakeholders and we welcome this: such evidence adds
valuable perspectives and we encourage its submission. We will
continue to solicit evidence on occasion, not to re-run the Government's
consultation but to enable the House to hold a better-informed
debate on the instrument. The higher media profile has had a negative
side, in that our reports have on occasion been portrayed in the
press as more fiercely critical of the Government than is often
the case: we raise questions about policy rather than recommend
its rejection.
42. In the coming year we shall continue to press
Departments to provide the House with a proper assessment of the
likely impact on end-users of SIs when laid; and to be more systematic
in their checking of the quality of SIs. We also hope to see the
assessment of SIs affecting public sector bodies treated with
equal vigour to those which affect the private sector.
43. We have the duty of drawing to the attention
of the House instruments which may imperfectly achieve their policy
objectives, and this includes their effective implementation.
We have commented in this Report that the laying and coming into
force of multiple instruments in the summer recess can impede
both scrutiny and implementation, citing education as an example
(paragraph 21). We also comment that the repeated amendment of
instruments adds an undesirable layer of complexity for users
(paragraph 27). Issues such as these give us concern about the
cumulative effect of a number of instruments made in short order
on the sector which they seek to regulate (be it, for example,
an industry, schools, farmers or small businesses): whether the
approach may adversely affect effective implementation. Too many
instruments made too quickly without clear strategy or guidance
may not achieve what the Government hope to achieve by their making.
When the opportunity arises, we intend to take an appropriate
set of SIs as a case study to take evidence on these issues from
stakeholders, especially those regulated.
27 13th Report (2006-07). Back
28
Report from the Joint Committee on Conventions, Session 2005-06,
(HL Paper 265-I) paragraph 229. Back
| 
