Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

Yes. That would be a way of resolving the problem of having a debate. Amendment 1 would require only a vote. It does not cover the question whether there should be a debate, which can be dealt with later. The third improvement—the final one I shall mention—that amendments 1, 2 and 8 seek to achieve is to the position of the Lords. We are trying to achieve an analogous situation to what happens with statutory instrument in the Lords. Very often when the Lords discusses a statutory instrument, it has the power to bring it down—to annul it or refuse its approval—with the effect that it does not come into law. However, it rarely uses that power, by convention. Instead, it has what it calls a non-fatal resolution, under which it says that it disapproves of the statutory instrument the Government propose, but does not exercise its technical power to refuse legal force. The amendments on the Lords would merely reproduce that system. In the end, the Commons would be more important in the procedure, and the Lords would be able to say it disapproves of a treaty without bringing it down. It seems to me that clause 24 is seriously defective, because the Government's intention appears to have been to write a clause that looks as if it transfers power when it does not. The intention of the amendments is to fulfil the Government's promise in reality, and change the system for the ratification of treaties so that real power comes back to this place.