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Legislation (Wales) Act 2019
Act of the National Assembly for Wales From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Legislation (Wales) Act 2019 (anaw 4) (Welsh: Deddf Deddfwriaeth (Cymru) 2019) is an Act of the National Assembly for Wales, which is designed to provide guidance on how to draft and interpret primary and secondary legislation of the Assembly.
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Background
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In July 2013, the Law Commission announced that it was including a section on the "form and accessibility of the law applicable in Wales" as an advisory project in its twelfth programme of law reform.[1] In 2016, the Law Commission published its final report on the form and accessibility of the law in Wales, recommending[2]
- consolidating and codifying legislation,
- giving guidance on how to standardise "legal Welsh" in such a way it is accessible to Welsh language speakers and giving judges and lawyers training to understand the specific legal terminology in Welsh,
- reducing the amount of legislation that is out-of-date on legislation.gov.uk.
- developing legal textbooks in Welsh
- passing an interpretation act
Lord Lloyd-Jones, a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, wrote a document supporting codification.[3]
The draft bill was introduced to the assembly in April 2018.[4]
Dispute with the UK Government
In April 2019, the Solicitor General of England and Wales, Robert Buckland, sent the Counsel General for Wales explaining the UK Government's position that certain provisions of the bill were outside of the legislative competence of the Welsh Assembly: mainly relating to Welsh statutory instruments made under acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.[5]
In June 2019, the Counsel General sent the Solicitor General, Lucy Fraser a letter explaining the Welsh Government's position that the lack of an interpretation act with provisions for bilingual statutory instruments, made by the Welsh Government under monolingual acts of the made passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom was problematic.[6]
In August 2019, the Solicitor General, Michael Ellis, sent the Counsel General a letter reiterating the UK Government's position but explaining that the UK Government would not refer the bill to the Supreme Court.[7][8]
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Provisions
The legislation has provisions:[9]
- a duty to improve and maintain accessibility of Welsh law
- making the English and Welsh language texts of a statute of equal status
- defining how to interpret words and expressions, such as:
- plurals and singulars
- gendered pronouns,[10]
- references to time of day
- distances
- grammatical differences
- defining the day on which the service delivered electronically is deemed to be effected
- defining how to use the Act together with the Interpretation Act 1978
- moving the commencement of an act from a commencement order, published separately as delegated legislation, Welsh statutory instruments would now be able to amend the text of the Act itself to insert a date
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Amendments
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Legislation (Procedure, Publication and Repeals) (Wales) Act 2025
The Legislation (Procedure, Publication and Repeals) (Wales) Act 2025 (Welsh: Deddf Deddfwriaeth (Gweithdrefn, Cyhoeddi a Diddymiadau) (Cymru) 2025) made amendments to:
- formally establish a class of delegated legislation known as Welsh statutory instrument[11]
- formally establish the King's Printer for Wales[12]
- repeal redundant provisions in legislation that have become spent or obsolete[11]
Other developments
The first consolidation act passed as part of the programme to consolidate legislation was the Historic Environment (Wales) Act 2023.[13]
See also
References
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