Member

The Minister may argue that it is not appropriate to put the provision for post-legislative scrutiny in the Bill, given that it will be eligible for review in any event three to five years after reaching the statute book. There are two points to be made on that. First, as I have indicated, a review is not guaranteed. These clauses ensure that there is such a review. Secondly, there are precedents for embodying such a provision in statute, particularly in respect of contentious legislation. One obvious and relatively recent instance is the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. The Act was amended in this House to provide for a committee to carry out a review of the operation of the Act, and to do so no earlier than 1 June 2020 and no later than 30 November 2020. The provision was not as detailed as these proposed clauses and the committee was a parliamentary committee, the Act stipulating that a majority of the members would be Members of the House of Commons.