Blog: 19 May 2023 - Dennis Hall, LLG Bulletin Editor

Running Out of Time?

On 10 May, it was one year since the 2022 Queen’s Speech, but so many Government Bills have yet to secure Royal Assent, that the Government is now planning to extend the current Parliamentary Session.

The Hansard Society say that, over the last year, a combination of political and economic turmoil, policy development failures, and poor parliamentary handling, have combined to ‘clog-up’ the legislative machine to such an extent, that the Government has extended the Parliamentary Session in order to get through its legislative agenda.

Normally, a Session lasts for around 12 months, but for the current Session this landmark was passed on 10 May. No date for the end of this now-extended Session has yet been confirmed, but it is widely expected that Parliament will be prorogued for a new King’s Speech in November.

The log jam looks like this… of 51 Government Bills that have been presented to Parliament since the Queen’s Speech in May last year, only 22 have achieved Royal Assent.

One Bill has been formally withdrawn, and 28 formally remain under consideration.

Of the 28 Bills that have not yet received Royal Assent: 9 Bills are still in the Commons; 12 Bills are in the Lords, 4 Bills are in ‘ping-pong’ between the two Houses; and 3 Bills are effectively stalled and are unlikely to proceed further in this Session but have not formally been withdrawn.

Then there have been numerous setbacks and delays, some involving key, flagship legislation…

The latest and most controversial reversal concerns the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill where the Government has embarrassingly withdrawn its universally derided plan to repeal over 4,800 EU related laws within a year, an ambition no one really believed in. Political rhetoric rarely translates into good law.

The delays with certain legislation have caused a huge range of issues… The political ‘twists and turns’ with the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill seem never ending as our coverage has shown … and this has had real adverse consequences… housing policy is in disarray… the development plan process in many authorities has stalled, and overall uncertainty on planning reform has served to discourage investment in major development schemes across the UK…

And then there’s the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill; this is a second attempt by Government to ‘get its act together’ on this most important topic post Brexit…

These are just a few examples, then, of the general disorder of a Government which, 'having taken back control’, (their words), has seemingly lost direction with its own legislative agenda in the current Parliamentary Session… plainly, it has not used its time wisely for a Government that holds such a huge majority.

Government appears to have lost focus, and its strategies and plans for bringing forward legislation in the next Session need to be carefully organised, as it is likely to be the last one before the next General Election…

Dennis Hall LLG Bulletin Editor