Correspondence
Lapsed sunset clauses
Merchant Shipping (Ship-to-Ship Transfers) Regulations 2020 (SI 2020/94)
Draft Private Security Industry (Licence Fees) Order 2020
1.We have no comment on the policy content of these instruments. Our concern is that both instruments reinstate legislation that had been allowed to lapse. We raised this matter with the relevant Ministers and asked for clarification of how each gap arose.
2.The Department of Transport (DfT) left a gap of 11 months in an anti-pollution measure that restricted transfers of oil between ships to designated areas of UK territorial waters. The Minister’s response (see Appendix 1) makes clear that the Department was aware in advance that the legislation was due to lapse but, in the pressure of the Brexit period, had decided that it was not a priority to reinstate the measure. We welcome the Minister’s assurance that the Department has a mechanism in place to monitor sunset clauses or post-implementation review dates systematically.1
3.In the case of the Home Office, the gap was of 11 years and related to an accounting waiver that allows for the charging of fees for Security Industry Authority licences to be averaged over busy and quiet years. The Minister’s response (see Appendix 2) explains that it was initially believed that demand for the service would even out by the time the original waiver lapsed. However, in 2013–14, when it became clear that demand had not flattened out over a three-year cycle, the opportunity to address the problem was missed. The Minister states that the Home Office will now undertake a trawl across the Department to identify any similar time-limited instruments and will put in place a central system to monitor these in the future. We are surprised that such a mechanism does not already exist in the Home Office. To avoid similar lapses, we urge the Government to ensure that such mechanisms are in place within all departments.
1 The Committee received a submission from Mr Richard Greenhill, which is published on our website: https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/255/secondary-legislation-scrutiny-committee/publications/.