European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

I am again most grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. He will know—I touched on this in my comments—that when this issue was first raised, I suggested that one possibility might be to allow statutory instruments to be laid and voted on by this House prior to the enactment of the further statute, but not allow them to be brought into force until that further statute had been enacted. That would allow the House to stop the statutory process if it was not happy with it. As I understand it, the further statute has to be enacted before the date we leave, because without it we do not have the powers to pull out. In those circumstances, I find it impossible to understand why my suggestion might not solve his problem. I think he will agree that that is where our dialogue stopped. If he actually wants to do something even before that, I have to say to him that, as a matter of principle, I object.