The hon. Member has made a good point. There is no doubt that this will cause an absolute divergence.
It is ironic that a party that has so often argued that power should reside in this House and not in Brussels, or even in the democratically elected Parliament of Scotland and the Welsh Senedd, is now attempting to cut MPs out of the legislative process entirely. The Bill represents a power grab on the part of the Executive of a kind almost unheard of in a parliamentary democracy. That is why I am so grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) for tabling amendment 36. It guarantees Members of this House their right to oversee what will undoubtedly be an extraordinarily complex and lengthy process, and it reaffirms a principle that is so fundamental to this country’s constitution: that laws should be made in this House in the full view of the public, and not cooked up by Ministers using obscure parliamentary procedure.
I have listened closely to the arguments advanced by Conservative Members, and I have yet to hear a single convincing case for why the Government should proceed with this Bill. For many of my constituents, every day is a struggle. They desperately need to see action to boost wages, tackle the scourge of fuel poverty, and support the NHS through the worst crisis in its long history. Instead, the Government are deciding to waste precious time and resources on this needless, reckless, and utterly ill-considered shake-up of the law. On this, as on so much else, this Government have their priorities all wrong.