Its report, ‘Plus ça change? Brexit and the flaws of the delegated legislative system’, published this week, focuses on hundreds of statutory instruments (SIs) that were ‘rubber-stamped’ ahead of Brexit. During the 2017-2019 parliamentary session, 1,835 SIs were laid in total, 615 of which were Brexit-related (about a third). The wordcount of Treasury and HMRC instruments increased fourfold and the average page length of Brexit-related instruments was double the norm.
The report raises concerns about the lack of impact assessments, which were either ‘poor or non-existent’. It highlights the lack of parliamentary debate, noting the government used the urgency procedure 30 times to give SIs immediate legal effect, before they had been debated. Moreover, Henry VIII powers were used by ministers to amend primary legislation that had already been passed by Parliament, in 142 of the 622 Brexit SIs.
The number of legislative errors and mistakes increased, resulting in 97 SIs being laid before Exit Day to fix the mistakes of earlier SIs introduced in the same parliamentary session.
Dr Joe Tomlinson, the PLP’s research director, said: ‘It is the combination of deficiencies that is most concerning.
‘SIs are not meant to bring about important changes in policy because of the lack of scrutiny they allow, but many did exactly that. Parliament was shut out of a significant part of law-making.
‘Those instruments touched on every part of UK life, from food safety to immigration to transport. Very significant policies such as alterations to deportation thresholds and changes to social security law were placed in secondary legislation with no explanation as to why and no mechanism to check the government’s decision to do so.’
Tomlinson called for reform, warning the same problems were now arising in relation to COVID-19.
