Two political stories this week highlight an often overlooked feature of the legislative process: Parliament may approve a law but ministers frequently decide whether and when its provisions actually take effect.

Last week, the Government announced that it intends to pause new prisoner-release arrangements due to begin in September. Meanwhile, renewed discussion around reform of social care has focused attention on how best to protect people from catastrophic care costs. Yet in both cases Parliament has already legislated, and the unresolved question is whether, and if so when, ministers will switch the relevant provisions on.

The Sentencing Act 2026, which Parliament passed earlier this year, includes provisions to reduce the proportion of a sentence that a prisoner must serve before they become eligible for automatic release, from 50% to one third for most offenders, and from two thirds to 50% for certain more serious offenders. Like many Acts of Parliament, however, it left the date on which the provisions would come into force to ministerial discretion. On 8 June, the then Prisons Minister, Lord Timpson, exercised that discretion by signing (“making”) the Sentencing Act 2026 (Commencement No. 4) Order 2026, to bring the provisions into force on 2 September 2026.

The new Prime Minister’s subsequent statement that the changes will be paused suggests the Government may now revoke the commencement order to prevent the provisions coming into force, at least while it reviews their impact. Yet Parliament debated these provisions extensively just a few months ago, including the likely consequences for the release of violent and sexual offenders, before deciding they should become law. Formally, the Government is exercising its discretion about when the legislation should come into force, not whether it should. In practice, however, that distinction is increasingly difficult to sustain if commencement is repeatedly delayed or revoked.

Social care reform illustrates just how long ministers can leave provisions approved by Parliament sitting on the statute book without bringing them into force. Section 15 of the Care Act 2014 provided a statutory framework for a lifetime cap on social care costs, but it has never been brought into force, remaining in legislative limbo for more than a decade. Successive governments have delayed implementation of the cap on care costs, redesigned the policy, and ultimately abandoned it. Yet the provisions remain on the statute book. If ministers were now to conclude that a cap on care costs remains the right approach, Parliament might not need to legislate for it again. Instead, ministers could bring the relevant provisions of the Care Act 2014 into force.

These two examples are far from unique. The House of Lords Library estimated in 2022 that 480 Acts of Parliament passed between 1960 and 2020 contained at least one provision that has never been brought fully into force.

Commencement powers serve an important purpose. Governments often need time to prepare administrative systems and processes, make regulations (secondary or delegated legislation usually in the form of Statutory Instruments) to implement provisions, establish new public bodies, or secure the necessary funding before complex policy changes can take effect. But these same powers also give Ministers considerable control - close to a veto - over whether Parliament's decisions are ever actually implemented.

That discretion is not, in theory, unlimited. In R v Secretary of State for the Home Department, ex parte Fire Brigades Union [1995], the House of Lords held that ministers could not lawfully decide never to bring a statutory provision approved by Parliament into force. The judgment also established that Ministers must keep the question of commencement under ongoing review. The courts, however, cannot themselves bring legislation into force or compel ministers to do so. Where governments repeatedly delay commencement of a provision in an Act of Parliament without formally abandoning it, the principal constitutional safeguard is therefore political rather than judicial. It falls to Parliament to hold ministers to account for failing to implement legislation that it has enacted and, where necessary, take steps to ensure that its legislative intentions are respected and implemented.

As Professor the Lord Norton of Louth pointed out in a recent article for the Journal of International and Comparative Law, the public – and many politicians – naturally assume that once a bill receives Royal Assent, it thereby becomes enforceable and enforced, and the policy process is effectively complete. Questions of commencement therefore receive relatively little attention during a bill’s passage. These two policy examples - sentencing and a social care costs cap - illustrate why Royal Assent should not be regarded as the end of either the legislative process, or Parliament’s scrutiny responsibilities.

Lord Norton proposed several reforms to improve transparency and accountability around uncommenced legislation, including:

• moving commencement provisions from the end of bills to the beginning, so that Parliament gives greater attention to them during the scrutiny process;

• requiring Ministers to report on uncommenced provisions on a regular basis and explain any prolonged delays, perhaps through a more systematic process of post-legislative scrutiny; and

• imposing a time limit (via a sunset provision) on an Act’s commencement provisions, requiring Ministers to bring provisions into force within a specified period.

Parliament passes legislation because it intends to change the law. Yet MPs and Peers may spend weeks scrutinising and amending provisions that ministers subsequently leave uncommenced for years, or never implement at all. Parliamentarians should therefore pay greater attention not only to what legislation says and the impact it is intended to have, but also to whether, and if so when, its provisions will ever be brought into force.