My Lords, I rise to speak primarily —subject to pre-emption, whatever that means—to Amendments 73 to 79 and Amendments 117 to 119, which are in my name.
I think we ought to start the debate—although we have started it already—by reflecting on how very wide the powers contained in Clauses 7 to 9 are. They are powers exercised by regulation: mostly by the negative procedure, but some by the affirmative procedure. However—this is the critical point—in both instances, the regulations when laid cannot be amended. That raises an issue that I hope this House will come to on some subsequent occasion, because I have a number of amendments in my name on that very subject.
These powers are very wide-reaching. One way of ascertaining how significant they are—I hope the right reverend Prelate will forgive me if I use the word “significant” in this context—is to look at paragraph 2 of Schedule 7, which lists the provisions that can be made only by the affirmative procedure. I cite a few examples: the creation of a public authority and presumably the powers to be given to it; the transfer of legislative powers from an EU entity to a UK-based public authority; the levying of fees without specific limit, which I am sure noble Lords know we will come to later in Committee; the creation of criminal offences that attract a custodial sentence of up to two years, which, again, we will come to later in our debate; and the creation of powers to legislate or amend existing powers. These powers are not trivial in character. I have not sought to identify the various powers that could be exercised by way of the negative procedure, because their name is legion.
There is one fundamental rule in politics, which I have learned from 31 years in the House of Commons: if you give powers to Ministers and officials, those powers will be abused—sometimes by design and sometimes by inadvertence, but the abuse will happen and that is certain. It is especially so when the powers are created by secondary legislation because the parliamentary oversight is slight and ministerial oversight is often non-existent. So the question your Lordships should be asking—I agree with my noble friend Lord Lang
that it is a pity more noble Lords are not asking themselves this question tonight—is whether the language in the Bill is sufficiently tightly drawn to prevent abuse. The answer to that question is manifest to all of us and all noble Lords who have spoken: no. The Bill does not prevent abuse; it enables abuse.
The powers given to Ministers are “appropriate”. That is a weasel word. Nobody is better placed than I to describe it as such. It is a subjective word, very difficult to define in advance, impossible to challenge and non-judicable. That is why, when I was a Minister, I used it often—at the Dispatch Box, in drafting and in correspondence. I knew full well, as does every person who has stood at the Dispatch Box, that “appropriate” means precisely what the Minister wants it to mean. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell, is quite right about that. Might I suggest the Corbyn/Johnson test to your Lordships? It is very useful. I look to my side of the House and ask, “How many of your Lordships want to see Mr Corbyn possessed of these powers?” I now turn to the other side of the House, lest noble Lords think I am being partisan, and ask, “How many of your Lordships want to see Mr Johnson possessed of these powers?” The joke is that you can reverse the question and get the same answer.
We should not allow the draft as it is. I accept that the distinction between “necessary” and “essential” is pretty minor. I can live perfectly well with the word “necessary”. “Essential” is one notch higher in the hierarchy of requirement but I accept that “necessity” has been hallowed by legislation in the past. I encounter that word frequently in regulatory law, and the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, was absolutely right to touch on the point of judicial review. If you use the word “necessary”, it makes things easier to challenge. There have been many appeals in the regulatory framework where the courts have held that the test has not been laid out.
I want to comment on two other amendments I have ventured to propose. Amendments 74 and 117 require the Minister to have “reasonable grounds” for his or her decision on the need to trigger the regulation-making powers. I will be open about this: my purpose is to tighten the test, to make it judicable and to limit the discretion. I would very much like to know from the Minister why he objects to the use of reasonable grounds as the criterion for exercising the power. I am sure he is not going to say that he wants to rely on unreasonable grounds; that is not, I think, an argument he would like to put forward. We are entitled to know the justification.
I have one very small point on Amendment 75, which includes a reference to redundancy. What does that reference add to what is already covered by the retained part of Clause 7(2)(a)? It comes to this: the main issue for this House is to require a test of necessity to be imported into these three clauses and elsewhere in the Bill where the Government want us to accept a lower threshold of need—or, more precisely, put no threshold at all. I regard this as matter of considerable importance and I want to know—as I am sure the Committee does—why the Government want us to prefer a word that gives the maximum discretion to Ministers, but the minimum control and influence to Parliament and the courts.
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