Following Government review, the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee published a follow-up Report on the revised Principles on 5 November 2013.
Section 9 of the report considers the appropriate timescale for consultations:
‘…appropriate timeframes for consultation processes are still seen as between two and 12 weeks. We are clear that six weeks should be regarded as the minimum feasible consultation period, save in very exceptional cases;
where the consultation period spans a holiday period,[6] the Principles say that policy-makers “should consider mitigating action”. We see this as far too imprecise and open to subjective interpretation. We prefer that holiday periods be avoided altogether but note a suggestion from the Panel that, where it is unavoidable, an extra two weeks should always be added. The Government have not taken up this suggestion…’
