Overview

This bill amends the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 to increase parliamentary scrutiny of health protection regulations made by the government. It aims to ensure that such regulations are properly assessed for proportionality and are subject to greater parliamentary oversight before they are enacted.

Description

The bill makes two key changes to the 1984 Act:

• Increased Scrutiny of Regulations: It requires the government to provide a statement demonstrating the proportionality of any new health protection regulations, backed by a regulatory impact assessment. Both the statement and assessment must be laid before Parliament.
• Amendable Regulations: The bill introduces a new procedure requiring a draft of any new regulations to be laid before both Houses of Parliament for at least 20 sitting days. Parliament can then challenge or amend the draft before it becomes law. Previously, the process for amending existing regulations was less defined.

Government Spending

The bill itself does not directly allocate any new government spending. However, the increased scrutiny process may lead to increased administrative costs associated with producing regulatory impact assessments and responding to parliamentary challenges to proposed regulations.

Groups Affected

• Parliament: Will have significantly increased powers to scrutinize and potentially amend health protection regulations.
• Government Departments: Will face additional workload in producing proportionality statements and regulatory impact assessments.
• The Public: Could see a change in the speed and nature of public health regulations, depending on the level of parliamentary scrutiny and challenge. Changes may lead to delays but could also lead to more carefully considered, proportionally designed, regulations.

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