Statutory Instrument (UK) - Parliamentary Control Over Statutory Instruments - Negative Resolution Procedure

Negative Resolution Procedure

The more common form of control is the ‘negative resolution procedure’. This requires that either:

• the Instrument is laid before Parliament in draft, and can be made once 40 days (excluding any time during which Parliament is dissolved or prorogued, or during which both Houses are adjourned for more than four days) have passed unless either House passes a resolution disapproving it, or
• the Instrument is laid before Parliament after it is made (but before it comes into force), but will be revoked if either House passes a resolution annulling it within 40 days.

A motion to annul a Statutory Instrument is known as a 'prayer' and uses the following wording:

That an humble address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the be annulled.

Any member of either House can put down a motion that an Instrument should be annulled, although in the Commons unless the motion is signed by a large number of Members, or is moved by the official Opposition, it is unlikely to be debated, and in the Lords they are seldom actually voted upon.

If a resolution to annul an Instrument is passed, it will be revoked by the Queen through an Order-in-Council. Between the date of the resolution to annul and the date when the Order-in-Council is made, the Instrument remains law but ineffective. Anything done under the Instrument whilst it was in force remains valid, and the Government is free to make a new Statutory Instrument.

The last occasion on which a Statutory Instrument was annulled was when, on 22 February 2000, the House of Lords passed a motion to annul the Greater London Authority Elections Rules 2000 (SI 2000/208). The last time the House of Commons annulled a Statutory Instrument was in 1979 when it rejected the Paraffin (Maximum Retail Prices) (Revocation) Order 1979 (SI 1979/797).