Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many statutory instruments from the Department for Work and Pensions have been laid this calendar year; of those, what percentage corrected errors in a previous instrument (including drafts of affirmative instruments that had to be superseded by correcting drafts); and what steps that Department is taking to reduce the need for correcting instruments.

The Department for Work and Pensions has made 70 Statutory Instruments (SI) in 2014. Of these, 14 affirmative SIs had been laid in draft over the same period and one draft was withdrawn and replaced with two SIs: one under the affirmative procedure (SI 1954) and another using the negative procedure (SI 1711). In this period there was also one negative SI made (SI 1621) to clarify a regulation included in an earlier SI made (SI 1386) but not yet in force.

The Department, with its Legal Service teams in the Treasury Solicitors Office (TSOL), is taking steps to mitigate the need for correcting instruments through training and support to build capability, sharing best practice and learning from internal review and reports from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Further, TSOL is undertaking a strategic project to improving the quality of SI drafting as part of its “legal quality” agenda.