Westminster Unveils Landmark Speed Bill That Has Already Taken Longer to Read Than Most Legislation

Parliament moved swiftly last Tuesday to announce that it would be moving more swiftly. The Parliamentary Velocity Programme — a bold, cross-departmental initiative to "streamline, modernise, and turbocharge" the legislative process — was unveiled in a forty-minute presentation that itself overran by two hours, following a pre-briefing seminar on how to attend the presentation.

Officials described the moment as "historic," a word that in Westminster has come to mean "occurring."

The Problem, As Currently Understood by People Paid to Understand It

The genesis of the programme, according to the twelve-page executive summary of the four-hundred-page scoping review, was a recognition that Parliament is slow. Bills routinely take years to pass. Amendments spawn counter-amendments. Committees examine things, then other committees examine the first committees. By the time a piece of legislation reaches Royal Assent, the problem it was designed to solve has typically either resolved itself, worsened catastrophically, or been renamed.

Something, officials agreed, had to be done. What followed was eighteen months of working groups, stakeholder consultations, a pilot scheme, a review of the pilot scheme, and a consultation on the review, at the end of which the Parliamentary Velocity Programme was born.

It is, by all accounts, a substantial piece of work.

"We've introduced a seven-stage pre-reading framework," explained Damian Holt-Fenwick, the newly appointed Deputy Assistant to the Parliamentary Velocity Coordinator, in a statement issued at 11:47pm on a Wednesday. "Members now have access to colour-coded amendment summaries, a tiered annotation system, and mandatory pre-session orientation modules to ensure everyone arrives fully prepared to engage with the preparatory materials."

Asked how long the pre-session orientation modules take to complete, Mr Holt-Fenwick confirmed they run to approximately three hours per sitting day.

Colour-Coding: A Revolution in Colours

Central to the programme is a new amendment classification system, which assigns each proposed change to a bill one of fourteen colours depending on its urgency, complexity, cross-departmental relevance, and what the Deputy Assistant to the Parliamentary Velocity Coordinator has described as "temporal sensitivity."

Amendments classified as Amber-Gold (Category 7) must be reviewed before Teal-Grey (Category 3) amendments but after Burgundy (Category 11) amendments, unless the bill in question has been designated a Tier Two Accelerated Instrument, in which case the sequencing reverts to a modified version of the previous system, which was itself a modification of the system before that.

A laminated reference card has been produced. It is four pages long.

"The colour system has genuinely transformed how Members engage with legislation," said one parliamentary official, who asked not to be named on the grounds that she hadn't finished reading the colour system yet. "Previously, people just read bills. Now there's a structure. It's much more efficient, once you understand it."

The guide to understanding it runs to sixty-two pages and is available in fourteen languages, none of which are the colour-coding system itself.

Forty-Seven Hours Per Page: A Clarification

Figures published by the House of Commons Procedural Monitoring Sub-Committee — itself established as part of the Velocity Programme to monitor the Velocity Programme — show that the average processing time per page of primary legislation has risen from eleven hours to forty-seven hours since the reforms were introduced.

Officials were keen to contextualise this statistic.

"The previous eleven hours was unstructured time," explained Mr Holt-Fenwick. "What we now have is forty-seven hours of purposeful engagement. Members aren't just reading — they're pre-reading, annotating, attending orientation, completing the post-orientation reflection module, and then reading. The quality of the reading is substantially higher."

When asked whether any bills had actually passed faster under the new system, Mr Holt-Fenwick said he would need to check with the Deputy Assistant to the Deputy Assistant, whose role was created last month to help manage the Deputy Assistant's workload following the introduction of the new system.

Expert Reaction

Dr Philippa Crowe-Hastings, a senior fellow at the Institute for Legislative Throughput and a woman who has clearly made peace with her career choices, told The Daily Despatch that the programme represented "a fascinating case study in the institutionalisation of process for its own sake."

"What you tend to find," she said, "is that when organisations feel overwhelmed by complexity, they respond by adding more complexity that they can control. It doesn't reduce the original complexity. It just gives everyone something to do while the original problem continues."

She added that she had submitted written evidence to the Sub-Committee on Parliamentary Velocity Monitoring in March and had since received an automated acknowledgement, a request to reformat her submission in line with the new colour-coded submission framework, and an invitation to attend a pre-evidence orientation seminar.

She has not yet attended the seminar. The seminar has not yet been scheduled.

What Happens Next

The Parliamentary Velocity Programme is currently in Phase Two of a six-phase implementation plan. Phase Three, which involves a review of Phase Two, is expected to begin once Phase Two's post-completion assessment framework has been approved by the Sub-Committee, ratified by the full Committee, noted by the relevant Select Committee, and read — in full, using the colour-coded annotation system — by Mr Holt-Fenwick.

Phase Six, which is where the actual acceleration of legislation is scheduled to occur, is projected for late 2027, subject to review.

In a brief statement released alongside forty pages of supporting documentation, the Minister responsible said he was "proud of the progress made" and looked forward to "a Parliament that works at the speed the British public deserves."

The statement was issued on headed notepaper in Amber-Gold (Category 7).

No one has yet determined what that means.