European Union Bill

I shall turn to Lords amendment 15, which would insert a sunset clause into the Bill, so that part 1 and schedule 1 would expire when Parliament is dissolved, only to be revived at the discretion of the Secretary of State and with the approval of Parliament for the duration of the new Parliament. That exercise would have to be repeated every five years. I have looked carefully at the arguments for such a measure. As the Government made clear in the other place, sunset clauses can be useful in legislation proposing new or extraordinary powers for the Executive, or in legislation that would serve a specific or time-limited purpose, but this Bill does neither. Some colleagues in the House of Lords said that the Bill was a constitutional innovation and should therefore be subject to a sunset clause, but much of what we do in Parliament is innovative. We believe that the Bill is an innovation that will be welcomed by the British people, and it should become an enduring part of our constitutional framework.