testing requirement. In fact, I think that was broadly supported across the House. What the Regulations Review Committee did, however, question was exactly how that pre-departure testing system was going to operate and, in particular, who would make decisions about who was covered by it and who was exempt. They’ve raised, I think, some quite legitimate issues that the Government will address. So, while we’re confirming the order as made, I do want to accept the criticism made by the Regulations Review Committee and say that we are going to go about fixing that, to ensure that the anomalies that they have identified have been addressed. There are two ways that we’ll do that, but first to what those anomalies are.
This amendment order established the requirement for people before travelling to New Zealand to get a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours prior to departure. I delegated, through the order to the director-general, the power to gazette the countries to whom the pre-departure testing would apply. Initially, we imposed that requirement on travellers coming from the US or the UK, with a note in the decision that the reason for doing that was because of the significant outbreaks of COVID-19 that they were experiencing, and particular concern around the more highly transmissible variant emerging in the UK. Allowing the director-general to gazette which countries it applied to allowed us to add countries as risk was identified. The reality now is that, within a short space of time, the presumption there reversed: where we extended that requirement to all the countries unless there was an exemption, and then subsequently issued an exemption to that.
The reason the Regulations Review Committee raised a concern was that the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020 specifically allows the director-general to exempt people from requirements. The Regulations Review Committee was concerned that allowing the director-general to decide who was covered by requirements was an unusual or unexpected use of the delegation ability within the Act. I think that that's a legitimate point; so we will amend the order to make it clear that it applies to everyone, unless people are exempted. So we will make that as a further amendment to the order, and then that will then be subject to Regulations Review Committee scrutiny again. That will get around the issue that they have raised. However, it does raise a wider issue that the Parliament will have an opportunity to consider when we next consider amendments to the Act itself, and that is whether or not the director-general should be empowered to be able to include people within the scope of an order, rather than just exempt them from the scope of an order. That’s particularly, I think, relevant when we’re talking about quite operational decisions. It is an anomaly, I think, in the Act.
The Act itself was passed through Parliament during an emergency situation where we had to put a legal framework in place very quickly, and so we now know a little bit more about how that Act can be improved. I intend to bring forward several sets of amendments to the Act. The first, which will come through in the next few months, will be the easier changes to improve the Act that have been identified. A second, later in the year, will deal with some of the bigger policy issues that have been raised. Obviously, one of the reasons for doing this is I want the Act to be as complete as possible. Also, I think it’s important that the Act, which is likely to be used as a template should we ever have to do this again in the future, is as up to date and reflective of practice as possible. So we’ll bring further amendments to the Act forward in the future.
But, ultimately, these are all sensible decisions—I think; I made them—being approved by the House that are an integral part of our overall COVID-19 response. They largely relate to movement around the border and making sure that our rules there are as clear as possible. So most of the amendments we’re dealing with here are amendments of clarification, and then, also, the most substantive additional amendment we’re making is the implementation of pre-departure testing, which, as I said, I think everybody, by and
