I thank the noble Lord for anticipating my question. He referred to there being a problem with Clause 7(1), which says:
“A Minister … may by regulations make such provision as … appropriate … arising from the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the EU”.
If it is “may”, it could also mean “may not”. If there are no regulations to be made because there is no deal, and therefore there are no deficiencies in retained EU law to remedy, and that is the Government’s position, that subsection does not need to be invoked.
That is surely different from Clause 9. I do not see the parallel. Clause 9(1) refers to the parliamentary enactment of whatever the final terms are. We are talking about a scenario where there is no deal. As was said by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, if you are maintaining that it is unworkable in this situation, the Government need to come up with something that they consider a workable formula. The Minister must surely understand that the point is to make sure there is not wriggle room over where parliamentary responsibility and rights reside, and not to be able to dodge Clause 9(1) by saying, “Well, it’s not really final terms of withdrawal because we are crashing out without a deal”.