I am sorry that I am boring the right hon. Gentleman, but if he listens to the rest of my contribution perhaps his question will be answered at the end. Perhaps that will keep his attention.
The job of a legislature is to legislate. The Bill is effectively a blank cheque handing that job over to Ministers. I hope that the Minister will give an iron-clad guarantee that the Government will not use those powers in that way and an ultimate guarantee to change the Bill itself. Safeguards are vital for our nuclear industry, but they are needed for our parliamentary democracy as well.
The Bill’s Henry VIII clauses are particularly worrying, for the simple reason that if the Secretary of State does not use the powers effectively, the UK will simply not have a nuclear safeguarding regime. Our legislation book is scattered with such clauses that have never been enacted, so either the status quo ante prevails or some new primary legislation renders the power irrelevant. That is not the case, however, with the Bill, because if the regime is not fully established into UK law on exit day, it will not work.
The point is not only that the Secretary of State “may” introduce such legislation, but that they have to introduce it; otherwise the regime will not work. The Government are, in effect, asking us to trust that they will do the decent thing and make it work, while conceding that the Secretary of State may not, if he or she wishes, actually do it. That certainly does not look very good from the outside looking in, because there is no status quo ante to go back on in the event that the legislation is not properly translated into UK law. We will just fall of a cliff, as we depart from our membership of Euratom.
For all those reasons, it is evident that this barely fit for purpose Bill will, at the very least, need substantial amendment even to make it work on its own terms. Indeed, we also need a wider consideration of how the UK’s advantages and protections under Euratom can successfully be replaced in a national context.
We are clear, however, that, should all else fail, of course we need a nuclear safeguarding regime for the UK post Brexit—[Interruption.] I am pleased to get cheers from Government Members. But let me add a caveat: we will need to see evidence of substantial amendment to the procedure set out in the Bill, as well as evidence that the Government are really thinking about the best post-Brexit Euratom formulation, before we can wholeheartedly commit to agreeing to the passage of this Bill on Report and Third Reading.