Q&As

Q&As

The Q&As in this subtopic seek to address common questions faced when dealing with Public Law matters.

The Q&As supplement and link to further reading, but are intentionally short. It is anticipated that a brief Q&A will be most helpful when you need a quick overview of an issue and its likely impact. This might arise, for example, for lawyers needing to provide advice, business development or training at short notice.

The Q&A content is date stamped. This date provided is the original publication date and the Q&A states the law on that date.

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Public Law analysis: The Commons select committees and the Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (SLSC) are responsible for the sifting process under the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 (REUL(RR)A 2023). These committees scrutinise proposed negative statutory instruments (SIs) to be made under the REUL(RR)A 2023 and make recommendations on the appropriate parliamentary procedure before the instruments are laid in Parliament. The SLSC is also responsible for routine scrutiny of all secondary legislation, including SIs amending assimilated law. This bulletin outlines the latest updates and recommendations, collated on 28 March 2025.

Could we…and would we..? UK CoA confirms that it is bound by previous precedent on second medical use SPCs

Life Sciences analysis: The UK Court of Appeal (CoA) handed down its decision in the much-awaited Merck Serono v Comptroller-General of Patents case on 28 January 2025. Not only did the three-judge bench of LJs Lewison, Arnold and Birss confirm that the court could not deviate from previous binding (UK) precedent on second medical use Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPCs), the court also noted that even if it could deviate from its own previous case law, it would not choose to do so in this case. Priyanka Madan, senior associate and specialist in SPC and pharmaceutical regulatory issues at Herbert Smith Freehills LLP, discusses the judgment.