Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (formerly the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee) is a select committee of the House of Lords that refers secondary legislation, such as statutory instruments, to the House that it considers interesting or important. This is unlike the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and Commons Select Committee on Statutory Instruments, which only scrutinise instruments for legal and drafting defects. The specific criteria used by the committee are whether the legislation—

1. is politically or legally important or gives rise to issues of public policy likely to be of interest to the House
2. may be inappropriate in view of changed circumstances since the enactment of the parent Act
3. may inappropriately implement European Union legislation
4. may imperfectly achieve its policy objectives.

The committee meets in private on a weekly basis when the House is sitting. Secondary legislation currently being considered by the committee is listed on their website.

The committee adopted its current name on 15 May 2012 principally because of the addition of Public Bodies Orders under the Public Bodies Act 2011.

Due to the number of additional instruments specifically related to Brexit, the committee expanded into two sub-committees from October 2018 until April 2019.

Membership

As of July 2026, the membership of the committee is:

Member	Party
Lord Watson of Invergowrie0(Chair)		Labour
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville		Liberal Democrat
Lord Blackwater		Conservative
Baroness Boycott		Crossbench
Baroness Dacres of Lewisham		Labour
Lord Evans of Guisborough		Conservative
Lord Grabiner		Crossbench
Lord John of Southwark		Labour
Lord Kempsell		Conservative
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard		Crossbench
Lord Pack		Liberal Democrat

External links

• The records of the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee are held by the UK Parliamentary Archives