Recommendation 3

The Government has neither followed its own guidelines, nor engaged as productively as we would have liked with our Committee over this Bill. The interval between introduction and Second Reading was not long enough for proper preparation by Members of the House. The publication of the Impact Assessment over a month after the Bill was introduced and halfway through the consideration of the Bill in Committee, shows scant regard for the House. The decision not to involve our Committee in pre-legislative scrutiny, or even to give us prior notice of the Bill’s publication, has made it more difficult for us to conduct proper scrutiny of the Bill. Had we been involved at an earlier stage, we could have fed our findings into the Bill itself and this process would also have allowed the Government to respond to issues raised by stakeholders in advance of Second Reading. (Conclusion, Paragraph 11)