My Lords, the amendments in this group all seek to address a long-standing problem with statutory instruments: that for the most part, they are incapable of amendment. That is not absolutely always so because, many years ago in the other place, I moved an amendment to a statutory instrument arising from the Census Act but few bits of primary legislation allow one to do that. This is not an occasion on which those of us who have long been concerned about that are trying to use this legislation to improve a long-standing defect. It is peculiarly relevant to what we are considering because major matters will be dealt with by way of statutory instrument—a theme throughout the debates in recent days—and they may well include things which ought to be susceptible to amendment, such as details about the creation of public bodies, their powers and remit. To take one example, and there will be others, there are the ways in which new bodies can be held to account when they are created to replace European bodies.
We would be left in a situation where it would be said in the House of Commons, “Take it or leave it—this is the only statutory instrument you’re going to get and we clearly need to address this issue, therefore you must accept it in this form”. I am afraid that in this House, it would be, “Take it or face unspecified constitutional consequences”. Either we agreed to the statutory instrument in its present form or did something we should really not be doing at all, according to members of the Executive. That is an absurd position to put this House in, when what would be at issue would be some fundamental defect in the way the statutory instrument sought to transpose existing European processes into the British domestic statute book. The Government have to address the plea that all these amendments raise: to have some way to do something which falls short of wanting to reject a statutory instrument but insists that if it is to go through, it must be amended in some way.