I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in this historic debate. It is getting late and a good many of the issues that need raising have been raised, but I would just like to return to a few of them.
I rise to support the Bill for one very good reason: it is the sort of Bill most of my constituents would like to see. They voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU and, like me, they want us to leave in as orderly a fashion as possible. The Bill ensures that we do not create legal black holes and therefore grand uncertainty for employers, employees and investors. It allows future Parliaments to amend all laws as they see fit and, in that sense, allows Parliament to become sovereign again. It is adaptable to the inevitable uncertainties of the Brexit process. The Bill achieves all that, and it is to the credit of the Government and of officials that they have managed to do it under tight time constraints.
There are some reasoned and principled objections to the Bill and to how it has been presented. It is clear that parts of the House will require guarantees over the so-called Henry VIII powers. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) mooted earlier, that might be possible if the Government set a legal limit on their ambitions. That said, we must not in our admirable quest for parliamentary scrutiny forget that this is a fiendishly complex transfer of legal powers the like of which this House has never seen. For that reason, we must afford the Government a degree of plasticity. We do not yet know how the final deal will turn out or when it will be available to the House. The Bill must be adaptable to permit that process to proceed as best it can and to allow for a multitude of outcomes.
Getting that give and take on particular clauses and powers will take time. If the House finds that it does not have enough time in Committee, it must have more. Call me boring, Mr Speaker, but I was a bit disappointed when the House did not sit past five on Thursday—it was very sad to see such big beasts manacled by a five-minute time constraint. I heard the Father of the House rightly pooh-pooh the Blairite family-friendly hours under which we labour. Family friendly? Is someone yanking my chain? Which of us in the Chamber today gets to put our children to bed of a night as it is? We should carry on sitting until our work is done; if we have to sit late, if we have to sit some Fridays, if we have to think about the length of recess, we must. The importance of getting the Bill right goes beyond those concerns. This is a job that requires sacrifice.
It is my firm belief that this Bill can be got right. I know that Members opposite feel the same, because in all the hours of debate that we have had none of them has been able to raise a serious reason why it should be voted down on Second Reading.