The UK post-legislative scrutiny gap

It is now 10 years since the introduction of the systematic approach to post-legislative scrutiny in the House of Commons and assessments have shown that it is yet to become a regular part of committee work, at least from the perspective of published reports. Although the procedures in the House of Lords are different, the extent of post-legislative scrutiny has also remained limited. This article attempts to identify the post-legislative gap and provides insight into why this gap is occurring. The article begins by analysing the limited amount of post-legislative scrutiny that has taken place to date, before analysing which government departments have been producing post-legislative memoranda and whether these memoranda are being picked up by departmental select committees. In so doing, the article analyses which committees have not, so far, been undertaking post-legislative scrutiny and explores some of the reasons for why they have not engaged.