Government Response: The Landfill Disposals Tax (Tax Rates) (Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Merit Scrutiny Point 3:      The Welsh Government is committed to increasing the number of Explanatory Memoranda and Regulatory Impact Assessments for Statutory Instruments that are laid bilingually in the Senedd. Standing Order 15.4 of the Senedd requires all documents to be laid bilingually so far as is appropriate in the circumstances and reasonably practicable, and Standard 47 of the Welsh Language Standards (the statutory duties imposed on the Welsh Ministers by the Welsh Language Commissioner) requires us to consider the subject matter and the anticipated audience of certain documents to prioritise their translation. Under guidance provided by the Commissioner’s office (in their Code of Practice for the Welsh Language Standards (No. 1) Regulations 2015), in prioritising these documents for translation at this time, we considered issues such as whether the Regulations related to issues affecting the Welsh language directly, whether the Regulations were of great interest to Welsh speaking groups in particular, and whether a high proportion of the documents’ audience would be Welsh speaking. As the Regulations are of a technical nature and will affect only an extremely small proportion of the population, the Explanatory Memorandum has not been deemed a priority for translation at this time.