Recommendation 29

HM Government Acknowledged

Government agrees that it is important to ensure that in an emergency the House of Commons is able to scrutinise the use of secondary legislation in a timely fashion. The biggest challenge of legislating for COVID-19 has been the need to legislate at an exceptional pace, because the cost of proceeding at a more normal speed would have been paid by the loss of lives. Proceeding at a more normal speed would have also resulted in costs to business, given that measures would have taken longer to revoke when no longer necessary, and resulted in greater uncertainty for both businesses and the general public. Though being made at pace, all statutory instruments brought forward in response to the pandemic have remained subject to parliamentary scrutiny and approval as set out in the terms of the parent Act. The creation of these powers and their terms would themselves have been scrutinised and debated in Parliament during the passage of the parent Act, informed by the work of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and the departmental Delegated Powers Memorandum which sets out the proposed delegated powers in the bill, justification of their inclusion, the choice of procedure and justification for that choice. Under normal circumstances it can take between six and eight weeks for a draft-affirmative SI to pass through Parliament. Waiting this long to implement some of the measures in response to the pandemic, such as the national lockdown initiated in January, would have led to significantly more cases, deaths and would have placed the NHS under severe pressure. The Government has worked hard to ensure that parliamentary oversight of the Government’s legislative programme has continued during the pandemic. Where regulations have needed to be introduced rapidly in order to implement measures to combat the spread of the virus and save lives, it has been necessary to use the emergency procedure. In addition, the Government has, whenever possible, sought to ensure Parliament is able to debate and vote on measures of national significance before they come into force, and as soon as reasonably practicable where this has not been possible. Recommendation 13 (Cabinet Office) – It would represent good practice if all other government departments also undertook to keep their corresponding select committees informed of significant changes to the law made by statutory instrument.