The Strathclyde Review into the power of peers to block legislation sent up by the Commons reports today, and it is expected to strip the House of Lords of its ability to kill off secondary legislation. And the way the government will bring in this reform, which will enshrine the primacy of the Commons, is by primary legislation, which means that if peers try any funny business, ministers can deploy the Parliament Act and force the change through.
Labour says this is a ‘massive overreaction’ to the tax credits row earlier in the autumn. But this reform, naturally, won’t change two major problems with secondary legislation that have very little to do with peers.
The first is that governments of all hues use secondary legislation to introduce policies that are considerably bigger and less detailed than secondary legislation was intended for.
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