We have already looked at how to reference legislation, together with that from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as how to reference Bills. This time we will be looking at how to reference Statutory Instruments (SIs) using the OSCOLA referencing system, including how to deal with abbreviations in later footnotes and in text.
What is a Statutory Instrument?
The first thing that we will be considering is what a Statutory Instrument is. They are sometimes called secondary, delegated or subordinate legislation, so it is worth keeping this in mind for your research. Simply put, they are designed to allow parts of legislation to come into force or be changed later without the need for Parliament to pass a whole new Act. You can see this in their name; they are instruments (tools) to help with statutes (Acts).
As you may already know, all Acts start out as a Bill, in either the House of Lords or the House of Commons. When this Bill is being read and when the Act is drafted and comes into force, there will be a lot of detail, but it will not be complete. This is where SIs come into play; Acts confer powers to Ministers using SIs that allow the Ministers to make more detailed orders, rules and regulations.
These powers have a lot of scope. They may be technical, such as deciding the dates that provisions of the Act will come into force, to change penalties such as fines or to create transitional provisions for when the Act or parts of the Act are coming into force. Alternatively, SIs may confer much wider powers, such as giving Ministers the authority to refine broad parts of the Act.
Some Acts may consist of only a very basic framework and it is SIs that allow them to be filled out or, alternatively, SIs may be used to make adjustments to an existing Act by amending it, updating it or simply putting it into force. The reasoning behind SIs is that to completely detail every Act at a Parliamentary level would be inefficient and unsustainable; there would just not be enough time for them to do this with all legislation.
The exact nature of the powers conferred to the Ministers will be detailed in the SI. SIs may be required to be reviewed by Parliament before they can become law, but not all have to follow this procedure. SIs are as valid as Acts of Parliament in courts and it can only be questioned whether a Minister has acted ultra vires (beyond their powers).
How Do You Reference a Statutory Instrument?
Now, we will look at the correct way to cite a statutory instrument in your work. The basic format is:
Name | Year, | SI Number
For example:
Penalties for Disorderly Behaviour (Amendment of Minimum Age) Order 2004, SI 2004/3166.
Taking each part in turn, we get:
Name
This is the name of the SI as it is written officially. These can be rather long, so you can use an abbreviation, which we will discuss later.
Year
As for statutes, this is just the year of the SI. The year is followed by a comma.
SI Number
Every SI is given a number to identify it, given to all the orders, rules and regulations consecutively throughout the year. This number is the running number combined with the year of the SI to create a serial number. If we look again at our example above:
Penalties for Disorderly Behaviour (Amendment of Minimum Age) Order 2004, SI 2004/3166.
We can see that this order’s serial number is SI 2004/3166. 2004 is the year of the SI, as can be seen earlier in the citation, and 3166 is the SI’s unique running number. These are put together, separated by a forward slash to give the serial number.
There are some exceptions to this method of citation. Before the introduction of the Statutory Instruments Act 1946 (c 36), SIs were instead called Statutory Rules and Orders (SROs). These are referenced in the format:
Title | Year | SR & O Number
For example:
Hollow-ware and Galvanising Welfare Order 1921, SR & O 1921/2032.
As you can see, the only difference is that the SI number is instead an SR & O number. Even then, these are still formed in the same way!
How Do You Use Subsequent Abbreviations?
If you will be referring to the same SI more than once in your writing you can abbreviate it in much the same way as you would use for statutes, which you can read about in my blog OSCOLA Referencing Summary for Legislation. The generally accepted way is to take the initials of all the major, capitalised words in the title of SI and the year. For example, the now replaced Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations 1999, SI 1999/2083 would be abbreviated to UTCCR 1999.
You should show this by placing the abbreviated form that you will be using in brackets after the first mention or citation. For example, in footnotes this would appear as:
1 Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations 1999, SI 1999/2083 (UTCCR 1999).
8 UTCCR 1999.
How Do You Reference Parts of Statutory Instruments?
If you want to refer to a specific section, regulation or article of an SI, place a comma at the end of the citation and then the pinpoint:
Name | Year, | SI Number, | Pinpoint
Eggs and Chicks (England) Regulations 2009, SI 2009/2163, reg 7(2).
You can also abbreviate these using the following table:
| part/parts | pt/pts |
| section/sections | s/ss |
| subsection/subsections | sub-s/sub-ss |
| paragraph/paragraphs | para/paras |
| subparagraph/subparagraphs | subpara/subparas |
| regulation/regulations | reg/regs |
| rule/rules | r/rr |
| article/articles | art/arts |
You should always use the full version if you are writing it at the start of a sentence, but always use the abbreviation in a footnote. If you are using it elsewhere in the text, either way is fine as long as it is consistent.
There are some exceptions to this pinpointing method if you are referring to rules of court, which we will look at in a later blog.
Wrapping Up
I hope this helps you to reference statutory instruments. They are an often-cited form of secondary legislation, so it’s important that you can use them confidently in your work. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below.
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