Statutory instrument (UK)
type of secondary legislation in the United Kingdom
A statutory instrument (SI) is the principal form in which delegated legislation is made in the United Kingdom.
Statutory instruments are governed by the Statutory Instruments Act 1946. They replaced statutory rules and orders, made under the Rules Publication Act 1893, in 1948.
Most delegated legislation in Great Britain is made in the form of a statutory instrument (in Northern Ireland, delegated legislation is organised into statutory rules, rather than statutory instruments.) The advent of devolution in 1999 resulted in many powers to make statutory instruments being transferred to the Scottish and Welsh governments, and oversight to the Scottish Parliament and Senedd. Instruments made by the Scottish Government are now classed separately as Scottish statutory instruments. Instruments made by the Welsh Government are now classed separately as Welsh statutory instruments.
When a statutory instrument is required
A statutory instrument is used when an act of Parliament passed after 1947 confers a power to make, confirm or approve delegated legislation on:
the king and states that it is to be exercisable by Order in Council; or
a minister of the Crown and states that it is to be exercisable by statutory instrument.
Minister of the Crown includes the Welsh Ministers and various acts provide that delegated legislation, although made by another person (for example, the General Dental Council), is also to be made by statutory instrument. Often the minister authorised to issue a statutory instrument is "the Secretary of State", which the Interpretation Act 1978 defines as "[any] one of Her Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State"; this form effectively allows the Prime Minister to create new departments and define or redefine their responsibilities at will.
A statutory instrument is also used when the King in Council or a minister exercises a power under an act passed before 1947 which is legislative, rather than executive, in character.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Statutory instrument (UK)” as type of secondary legislation in the United Kingdom. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as type of secondary legislation in the United Kingdom. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7604686. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1946, 1893, 1948 and 1999.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Statutory instrument (UK)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.