Summary

  • On 10 September, the Cabinet Office said a bespoke AI tool had identified around 7,000 consultation duties in the statute book. It did not publish the underlying records, method or a duty-by-duty decision list on the checked page.
  • A public ministerial letter says the government will seek to unwind thousands of consultation and reporting requirements during this Parliament, beginning from repeal and retaining by exception. That is an intention; it does not itself repeal a statutory duty.
  • The same letter preserves three reasons for formal consultation: a statutory requirement, conspicuous unfairness without consultation, or a ministerial judgment that formal consultation is the right way to seek external input.
  • The useful control artifact is therefore a disposition register connecting discovery, legal source, validation, decision authority, legislative vehicle, replacement participation and commencement.

The headline is a count, not a set of decisions

The Cabinet Office announcement of 10 September contains the arresting number. A bespoke AI tool, it says, identified around 7,000 consultation duties in the statute book. The release describes a direction to ministers, an expert central team that has intercepted proposed duties before Bills, and autumn plans for a new vision of public participation.

Those are three different states. Finding text is discovery. Preventing a proposed clause from entering a Bill is pre-legislative intervention. Removing an existing legal obligation is legal change. A single total cannot show whether a result is an active statutory duty, a delegated requirement, a reference to another provision, an old promise, a repeated administrative practice or a false positive. Nor can it show what has happened to any individual record.

The count may be a valuable starting inventory. It is not evidence that 7,000 duties have been repealed, that all 7,000 are unnecessary or that a model has the power to classify their legal effect. The public announcement provides no identifier-level list, validation method, precision estimate or disposition table. That absence is bounded to the official pages checked on 11 September; a later release could close it.

The ministerial letter makes the intention clearer

Unlike a rumour about an unpublished instruction, the joint letter to all ministers is public. Dated 7 September and signed by the Chancellor, First Secretary of State and Attorney General, it says there is no general duty of consultation. It tells ministers to decide and act, rather than treating formal consultation as an automatic default.

But the letter does not say “never consult”. It names three conditions in which formal consultation remains appropriate: statute requires it; not consulting would be conspicuously unfair; or ministers judge that there is a good case for external input and formal consultation is the right vehicle. It also calls for more participatory policymaking—earlier and more direct involvement shaped to the issue.

The most consequential paragraph concerns existing law. Within this Parliament, the government says it will seek to unwind thousands of consultation and reporting requirements. Its stated starting point is repeal, with retention by exception, and departments should look for room in Bills already advancing or being sought for later sessions. The verbs matter: “will seek”, “should consider” and “could be accommodated” describe a programme of future decisions. They are not commencement provisions.

The accompanying Treasury release is equally prospective. It says the government intends to legislate to reduce statutory consultation and reporting requirements. It also describes a planned fixed Challenge Window and a proposed parliamentary route for approving major infrastructure projects. None should be presented as already operative solely because it appears in a ministerial announcement.

Existing principles already reject consultation for its own sake

The policy is not beginning on a blank page. The Cabinet Office's Consultation Principles, updated in 2018 and still published, tell departments not to consult for the sake of it. They instruct officials to ask lawyers whether a legal duty exists, take responses into account and consult while policy or implementation plans remain formative.

The same principles say consultation is only one part of ongoing engagement. They call for proportionate duration, targeted access and a timely government response explaining what was received and how it informed policy. That makes the coming autumn guidance important: the test is not whether a written survey disappears, but whether affected people can identify a credible substitute before a decision hardens.

The principles also mark their own boundary. They have no legal force and remain subject to statutory and other legal requirements. New general guidance can change administrative expectations. It cannot silently delete a duty created by legislation.

A duty must be connected to its source of authority

UK Parliament's legislation explainer supplies the basic state machine. A Bill is a proposal for a new law or a change to an existing one. An Act creates or changes primary legislation. Secondary legislation can make changes where an existing Act grants the power. The correct route for any consultation duty therefore depends on where that particular duty lives.

Some candidates may be repealed through a future Act. Some may fall within a delegated power. Some may not be statutory at all and could be altered through administrative practice. Others may need to remain because they protect a group whose interests cannot otherwise reach the decision maker. Without a source citation and legal-route field, “repeal” collapses unlike cases into one political verb.

This is why a machine-generated inventory should be treated as a candidate queue, not a source of truth. A reviewer needs to confirm the provision, its current version, territorial extent, responsible department and interaction with other duties. The department then needs to state whether the candidate will be retained, repealed, amended, consolidated or replaced. Parliament and the public need to see the instrument that carries the decision and the date on which the state actually changes.

Publish the disposition, not only the discovery

A public consultation-duty disposition register would make that chain inspectable. This is an editorial proposal, not a system the government has announced. Each record could contain a stable ID, exact legal citation, territory, responsible department, affected groups, validation status and the reason a duty is considered duplicative, obsolete or necessary.

The record would then show the proposed disposition; the minister or other decision owner; the Bill, statutory instrument or administrative route; parliamentary stage where relevant; replacement form of participation; commencement date; and any challenge, review or correction. An AI-found candidate could remain marked “unvalidated” without creating the impression that it had already been selected for repeal.

Such a register would also test the promise of better engagement. If a formal consultation is removed, the replacement field should say whether officials will use a citizens' panel, targeted meetings, technical evidence sessions, local forums, open data or no substitute at all. “More participatory” becomes observable only when an affected group can find the channel, timing and decision point.

The government is making an argument about speed and accountability. Publishing the transition record would strengthen both. Departments could reuse validated legal analysis instead of recounting the same statute; ministers could own the reasons for retention or repeal; and Parliament could distinguish a real removal from a press-release total.

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