A tale of two houses? Post-legislative scrutiny in the UK Parliament

In the last decade a more systematic approach to post-legislative scrutiny has been taken by both the UK Government and Parliament. Currently, due to a lack of systematic scrutiny we do not know how both Houses of the UK Parliament are undertaking post-legislative scrutiny. The aim of the paper is to determine the similarities and differences between the House of Commons and House of Lords when undertaking post-legislative scrutiny. This paper addresses this gap in knowledge through the use of four case studies from both Houses. These case studies address how they select legislation for review, what recommendations they produce and how they deal with the follow up to government responses. The paper finds that there are a number of differences in the way legislation is selected by both Houses and also highlights the differences between them in terms of the output of their recommendations. Overall this paper contributes to our knowledge of the processes available to the UK Parliament for the undertaking of post-legislative scrutiny. This is important as post-legislative scrutiny, as a formalized activity is relatively new, and there is a contribution to be made here in terms of how such procedures can be utilized in other legislatures