Supplementary written evidence: letter
from Ms Claire Johnston, Legal Director, Department for
Children, Schools and Families
1. The Committee is interested in more specific
information about DCSF's plans for reporting to the House on monitoring
the implementation of Statutory Instruments. I have had further
discussions with my colleagues in the Better Regulation Unit here.
I can confirm that, as from November this year when the new rules
about impact assessments came in, we are maintaining a central
list of the review dates mentioned in new-style Impact Assessments.
The new template asks, "When will the policy be reviewed
to establish the actual costs and benefits and the achievement
of the desired effects?" The answer to that question is a
published statement of the Department's future plans and policy
officials here will want to be sure that any commitment is followed
up and met. As we mentioned, we are developing an electronic database
to help with this.
2. We are confident that the current manual
system and eventual electronic system will place us in a good
position to answer questions from the House and the Committee
on reviews of policy and related legislation. These systems will
also help us give fuller information in subsequent Impact Assessments
and Explanatory Memorandums relating to instruments which revoke
or amend earlier instruments.
3. At the moment, we are not clear what
proportion of our statutory instruments might require a new-style
Impact Assessment, nor how that proportion might differ from our
experience under the old-style Regulatory Impact Assessment. In
particular, it is possible that there will be a greater use of
the new framework to look at the costs and benefits of proposals
that impact solely on the public sector. We will be keeping this
under review over the first year of the operation of the new-style
Impact Assessments. We would be pleased to advise the Committee
in due course on our progress in establishing this new monitoring
system.
18 December 2007
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