Commentary on Sections Part 1 – Procedure for Making Welsh Subordinate Legislation
5.Part 1 of the Act amends the Legislation (Wales) Act 2019 (anaw 4) (‘the 2019 Act’) to make provision about Senedd procedures for making Welsh subordinate legislation. Part 2 of the Act amends the 2019 Act to make provision about the publication and preservation of Welsh legislation. The 2019 Act currently makes provision about the interpretation and operation of Welsh legislation as well as placing duties upon the Counsel General and the Welsh Ministers to improve the accessibility of Welsh law.
6.Part 1 of the Act amends the 2019 Act by inserting a new Part 2A (and Schedules 1A, 1B and 1C). New Part 2A of the 2019 Act places on a statutory basis the concept of a “Welsh statutory instrument”; it also sets out and gives a name to certain types of procedure that Welsh subordinate legislation required to be made by statutory instrument is required to follow in the Senedd.
7.After new Part 2A comes into effect, if an enactment (such as an Act of Senedd Cymru or an Act of the UK Parliament, but see Schedule 1 to the 2019 Act for the definition of “enactment”) provides that a particular piece of such subordinate legislation is subject to a particular procedure named in Part 2A, the requirements of that procedure will apply to the making of that subordinate legislation. This means that enactments will be able to apply the named procedures set out in Part 2A without having to describe the detail of those procedures each time.
8.Part 2A also makes provision in respect of new Welsh subordinate legislation to be made under enactments that were enacted or made before Part 2A comes into effect. In such cases most subordinate legislation will now be made as a Welsh statutory instrument (rather than as a statutory instrument within the meaning of section 1 of the Statutory Instruments Act 1946 (c. 36)). It will be subject to one of the Senedd procedures set out in Part 2A, even though the enactment the subordinate legislation is made under did not use one of the terms used to describe that procedure.
9.Instruments that are made by the Welsh Ministers acting with, for example, a Secretary of State in the UK Government, or instruments made as Orders in Council, are subject to modified versions of the new Senedd procedures.
10.Part 1 of the Act also amends the Highways Act 1980 (c. 66) and the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 (c. 27) to no longer require temporary road traffic orders to be made by statutory instrument (or Welsh statutory instrument).