At the end of January 2026 the House of Lords approved government amendments introducing greater scrutiny of regulations for Children Not In School. EACH TIME the regulations in the Wellbeing Bill are changed (not just the first time) the Westminster parliament or the Senedd will have to look more closely and there must be a vote.
Regulations are secondary legislation setting out exactly how a law will operate. While it is going through parliament a law is called a “bill” but once it has finished in parliament and received royal assent it becomes an Act.
An Act is primary legislation. The government has to wait until there is an Act in place before it is able to start making regulations and the changes to the law set out in the Act cannot come fully into force until the regulations are complete.
It is much easier for the government to change regulations than to change an Act of Parliament, which is why keeping things “off the face of the bill” and leaving it all to regulations later can become highly charged and controversial.
With the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill the government initially wanted ONLY THE FIRST set of regulations to be subject to scrutiny [via affirmative procedure” and “approval procedure”] with any later changes able to be made quickly and easily through a different process (negative procedure)
This was criticised by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee back in April 2025 which took the view that first-time-only affirmative powers were inappropriate where there was nothing to prevent significant changes being made subsequently.
On January 9th 2026 the government responded to the committee conceding the changes. Both the report and the government response are linked from this page
For a comparison of affirmative and negative procedure see https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/secondary-legislation-scrutiny