Commentary on provisions of Act Section 32: Powers relating to the start of the agreements
This section provides a power for Ministers, the devolved authorities and Ministers and the devolved authorities acting jointly to deal with certain matters that might arise as a result of the provisional application of the Agreements by the UK and EU where relevant. This includes dealing with matters that might arise as a result of a ‘gap’ between the end of the transition period and the start of the Agreements coming into force or being provisionally applied.
	This is a contingency, and is a power which is unlikely to be used as the UK and EU have agreed that provisional application will occur from the end of the transition period as long as both parties have been able to take the necessary steps to facilitate provisional application ahead of that time. This power would also allow parts of the Act which have been brought into force to facilitate the provisional application of the Agreements to be effectively ‘turned off’ again if ratification was not to go ahead and provisional application of the Agreements needed to be stopped.
	Subsection (3) places the following limits on regulations that can be made under this provision: regulation may not create a relevant criminal offence; amend, repeal or revoke the Human Rights Act 1998 or legislation made under it, or amend or repeal the devolution Acts subject to limited specific exclusions.
	The procedure for regulations made under this power are set out in Schedule 5, and described below.
	This power is part of a set of provisions made in the Act to enable provisional application of the Agreements where necessary. The main other provisions necessary for making provisional application work are the following:
A gloss in the interpretation provisions at section 37(3) which allows references in the Act to the Agreements or to parts of the Agreements to be read as references to the relevant agreement as provisionally applied;
The definition of "relevant day" in section 29(4) general implementation of agreements which makes the provision in section 29(1) (discussed above - which requires pre-existing domestic legislation to be read as if it was compliant with the Agreements) work in a provisional application scenario from the time the Agreements are provisionally applied; and
the commencement power at section 40(7) (discussed below) which gives flexibility to turn provisions in the Act on as and when they are needed.