Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department has deprioritised any Statutory Instruments in relation to the UK leaving the EU; and if he will publish the criteria his Department uses to deprioritise those Instruments.

Our objective has always been to have a functioning statute book in place by Exit Day and to ensure that the most critical secondary legislation was made by this point.

Defra requires 125 SIs to be in force for Exit day of which 122 have been laid and the other 3 SIs will be laid before Exit.

Each SI that is planned to be laid after 12 April has been carefully considered to ensure that this would not have legal or other consequences that cannot be addressed by temporary non legislative arrangements. In most cases the SIs would apply only very minor technical corrections to current legislation which would not impact operability or transfer functions from the EU which would not be required in the immediate period after Exit. We have also consulted the Devolved Administrations in reaching these conclusions.

As a consequence of this due diligence, Defra will have laid all critical secondary legislation immediately required for EU Exit. The laying of EU Exit SIs allows Parliament to fulfil its essential scrutiny role. The exact nature of this scrutiny, and the steps required before an SI completes its passage, is dependent on the type of SI and determined under the relevant primary powers.