There are quite a lot of bits to unpack in that. If we were to leave without an agreement and hence without a transition period, there would be some merit in her observation, although the gap would be short if the new body had been legislated for by the time we left. If the Government’s plan succeeds and there is a transition period, we will no doubt be bound by the current rules during that period so there would be two full years in which to establish the new body. It is not likely that the hon. Lady’s concern on that front will be realised in practice, although I admit some theoretical possibility of it.
The hon. Lady adduces a legislative logjam in DEFRA. I accept the facts that she presents, but I see them exactly the other way round. We have a Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs who is probably the most powerful one we have had for a long time, for various reasons of which hon. Members on both sides are acutely conscious. He is probably more committed to this agenda than any we have seen in recent times in either Administration—[Interruption.] I am conscious that the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) will inevitably cavil slightly at
that, and I respect his record. I genuinely believe that the current Secretary of State is even more devoted to the environment than he was.
An awful lot of DEFRA legislation will inevitably have to be brought to the House before exit. No Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary and no Government could resist it. One cannot exit the EU without solving the problems of the common fisheries policy and the common agricultural policy so there is a natural legislative slot, and this powerful Secretary of State will be more than capable of bringing before the House the relevant statutory provisions. They will not be simple; they will require mature deliberation in both Houses. I am sure we all agree that it is incredibly important that we get the provisions exactly right. We need to make sure that it is a genuinely watertight system, with a set of policies that apply, that the court will enforce and that can be brought to court by an independent body. We need to ensure that the independent body is genuinely and completely independent of the Government, that it can bring Ministers to court, that it is properly funded and staffed and that it looks at the way in which the principles are applied through the policy statement in practice.
I believe that if all that can be done in a proper statute, it would be not just a replication of where we have been, which is now much lauded but was in practice very imperfect, but a huge advance on that. We would have a more comprehensive enforcement of a better environmental legislative framework than any country on earth. That is a goal worth striving for in a proper Act, instead of trying to shoehorn into this Bill a set of new clauses and amendments that are well intentioned but cannot perform the same purpose.