Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (formerly the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee) is a select committee of the House of Lords that refers secondary legislation, such as statutory instruments, to the House that it considers interesting or important. This is unlike the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and Commons Select Committee on Statutory Instruments, which only scrutinise instruments for legal and drafting defects. The specific criteria used by the Committee are whether the legislation—

1. is politically or legally important or gives rise to issues of public policy likely to be of interest to the House
2. may be inappropriate in view of changed circumstances since the enactment of the parent Act
3. may inappropriately implement European Union legislation
4. may imperfectly achieve its policy objectives.

The committee adopted its current name on 15 May 2012 principally because of the addition of Public Bodies Orders under the Public Bodies Act 2011.[1]

Due to the number of additional instruments specifically related to Brexit, the committee expanded into two sub-committees from October 2018 until April 2019.[2]

Membership

As of July 2020, the membership of the committee is:[3]

Member	Party
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Chair)		Conservative
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville		Liberal Democrat
Lord Chartres		Crossbench
Lord Cunningham of Felling		Labour
Lord German		Liberal Democrat
Viscount Hanworth		Labour
Lord Liddle		Labour
Earl of Lindsay		Conservative
Lord Lisvane		Crossbench
Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury		Conservative
Baroness Watkins of Tavistock		Crossbench

References

1. "Lords Minutes of Proceedings for Wednesday 16 May 2012". UK Parliament.
2. "Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee - role". UK Parliament.
3. "Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee - membership". UK Parliament.

External links

• The records of the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee are held by the UK Parliamentary Archives