European Union Bill

I was coming on to counterterrorism. Those sunset clauses were designed because the Government had taken an enormous power to themselves. It therefore seemed right that there should be sunset clauses allowing those powers to lapse automatically. As my noble friend Lady Nicholson mentioned, we are now talking about giving power to the people in referenda, then saying, ““No, no, we should have a sunset clause so that those powers are then taken back by government””. That is a totally different concept, which was the point raised by my erstwhile noble friend Lord Pearson of Rannoch. There would be enormous problems in the country if we had to explain that we were passing legislation that gave referenda to the people and that those powers would then lapse and come back to their Government. The people of the country would not understand that in any way whatever. There is a very clear difference between giving the power to the people and having the Government, as in the counterterrorism legislation, taking powers to themselves that can be seen to be excessive. It is in those cases that the sunset clauses should allow those powers to lapse.