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Legislation and statutory interpretation.

Module B: Making legislation.

Chapter 5: Legislative impact.

Impact assessment and post-legislative scrutiny
Post-legislative scrutiny is not the same as (regulatory) impact assessment, which happens before the act.

In the UK:
 * Any Act has always been liable to some form of post-legislative review, whether by a Parliamentary Committee or internally within Government, but since March 2008 an additional and more systematic process has been put in place (though this is not to the exclusion of other processes).
 * 3 to 5 years (normally) after Royal Assent, the responsible Department must submit a Memorandum to the relevant Commons departmental Select Committee (unless it has been agreed with the Committee that a Memorandum is not required), published as a Command Paper.
 * The Memorandum will include a preliminary assessment of how the Act has worked out in practice, relative to objectives and benchmarks identified during the passage of the Bill.
 * The Select Committee (or potentially another Committee) will then decide whether it wishes to conduct a fuller post-legislative inquiry into the Act.

The memorandum from the UK Goverment to Parliament contains:
 * 1) Summary of the objectives of the Act
 * 2) Implementation
 * 3) Secondary legislation etc.
 * 4) Legal issues
 * 5) Other reviews
 * 6) Preliminary assessment of the Act

The purpose and benefits of post-legislative scrutiny have been identified as:
 * To determine whether a piece of legislation is working as it was intended to.
 * If not, to discover why; and
 * to address any problems quickly and cost effectively.
 * Better legislation.
 * Better regulation.

Reviews can be done by: There may be sunset or review clauses.
 * Government departments
 * Parliamentary committees
 * Other bodies
 * The Courts