Secondary legislation should not be misinterpreted as ‘executive orders’ issued by the Government. Rather, the use of secondary legislation is a legislative process of long standing. Statutory instruments, as a category of legislation, are governed by the Statutory Instruments Act 1946. Existing parliamentary procedures allow for Parliament to scrutinise as many or as few statutory instruments as it sees fit. Parliament can, and regularly does, both debate and vote on secondary legislation. Indeed, a large amount of EU law is implemented under the ECA through secondary legislation; although EU regulations are not approved by the UK Parliament at all, as they are directly applicable in UK law. The Government proposes that the Great Repeal Bill will use existing types of statutory instrument procedure.

High

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/604516/Great_repeal_bill_white_paper_accessible.pdf

Chapter 3