In my time as Chief Whip in the other place, I tried to model myself on Lord Dixon, whose style I rather liked as Chief Whip of the Labour Party.
I think what my noble friend means by “flag it up”—I stand to be corrected because I am not an expert on procedure—would require praying against it, and that would take some time. The sifting procedure that we propose is a 10-day system where, when the statutory instruments went before the sifting committee, the SSLC, they would be flagged up within 10 days to go to the affirmative procedure. That satisfies the Government’s requirements that it be done expeditiously.
We accept that next year we will possibly have hundreds of regulations coming through. I know that we want to get some though in advance—we may get many through—but we could have a period next year where we have a huge batch of regulations to get through because we are leaving the EU. Some may need to be done by 29 March while others may be done later, but we will not be able to have a 40-day praying period: we cannot take all that time to decide whether a regulation being passed by the negative procedure might need to go up to the affirmative procedure. The sifting procedure we have proposed is not like the super-affirmative procedure, which is far too slow. The special procedure we have proposed in this amendment, as well as in the EU withdrawal Bill, will allow for a rapid sifting so that recommendations can be made for a regulation to be upgraded to the affirmative procedure.