Commentary on Sections Section 10: Making of codes of practice by designated Minister
115.Section 10 sets out an established procedure for making or revising codes of practice. Similar procedures appear in section 9B of the Fire Precautions Act 1971, section 38 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 and section 85 of the School Standards and Frameworks Act 1998. A feature of the procedure is that the provisions of the relevant code of practice do not themselves become provisions of an order or statutory instrument, but the code is brought into force by a statutory instrument as set out in subsection (5).
116.Subsections (1) and (2) require that a draft code be produced and that various parties with an interest are consulted. This includes the National Assembly for Wales where the draft relates to Wales.
117.Subsections (3) to (8) provide for Parliamentary scrutiny of any proposed code. Subsection (4) makes provision for Parliament to veto any proposed code if it sees fit to do so, but as subsection (6) makes clear, this is without prejudice to the Minister’s ability to take up any proposed code and replace it with an amended draft for further Parliamentary scrutiny.