Correspondence
Government draft options for regional or local interventions
19.In our 19th Report7 we expressed concerns that there was a long gap between COVID-19 legislation being announced and it being laid before the House and that, when eventually laid, the regulations come into immediate effect thus denying Parliament the opportunity to scrutinise the detail before its implementation. We therefore welcomed the letter of 28 July 2020 from Helen Whately MP, Minister for Care, included in Appendix 1, which explained the government’s intended approach to local and regional lockdowns. The letter provides a policy statement for the way the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) intends to deal with local lockdowns during the pandemic. It refers to a “selection box” of standard format regulations on the Gov.uk website8 that can be tailored to the particular need. We regard this as a sensible compromise in the difficult circumstances of the pandemic and welcome the DHSC’s aim to improve transparency and public understanding of emergency legislation on COVID-19 restrictions.
Sunset provisions in statutory instruments dealing with COVID-19
20.We have noted in previous reports9 that the majority of statutory instruments that relate to the Coronavirus pandemic included sunset provisions. To assist the House in scrutinising the legislation, we asked the Leader of the House of Commons to send us monthly updates so that they could be properly monitored. Two further monthly updates were received during the recess, which are published in Appendix 2 of this report.
7 19th Report, Session 2019–21(HL Paper 84).
8 DHSC, ‘Draft options for regional or local coronavirus interventions’ (24 July 2020): https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/draft-options-for-regional-or-local-coronavirus-interventions [accessed 9 September 2020].
9 For example, our 13th Report, Session 2019–21 (HL Paper 57).