Post-legislative scrutiny in Westminster

The model of the legislative process adopted in Great Britain is often set as a model for other legislations. The model of British legislative procedure has undergone profound changes over the past twenty years. The introduction of pre-legislative scrutiny and post-legislative scrutiny may be considered the most important changes in the field of legislative proceedings. Post-legislative scrutiny in Westminster is a kind of parliamentary control over government activities. The parliamentary body entrusted with the post-legislative scrutiny is the special committees, which, as a rule, were not involved in the legislative procedure. Post-legislative scrutiny is not a procedure applicable to every act passed by parliament (on the contrary, only a few legal acts are subject to it), and the criteria for the selection of normative acts subject to post-legislative control are not defined. As a consequence, both government decisions regarding the selection of acts, regarding the functioning of which the report will actually be prepared, and the choice of laws subject to full post-legislative control in the parliament are taken in a discretionary manner and do not require justification. At the same time, it is possible to put forward the thesis that – as previously anticipated – the special commissions have no possibility of reviewing every public law that has been passed, and focus only on those that are particularly important for the functioning of society and democracy.