My Lords, I have an interest in Amendments 70 and 71. I am interested because they address the issue that I believe is central to the Bill: the process by which the two Houses of Parliament scrutinise legislation returning from Brussels to this country as part of the Brexit process; and simultaneously to ensure that that scrutiny is effective and that opportunities for a power grab by the Executive are prevented. In my remarks, I am informed by my past membership of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee.
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For me, as a mild Brexiteer, far too many of our debates on the Bill seem to have been about what happens after Brexit, not the process of our withdrawal. At least some debates seem to me to have had, as a subtext, a wish to complicate and perhaps even frustrate the whole process. However, Amendments 70 and 71 are clearly about improving scrutiny. I raised the challenge of this on Second Reading and tabled amendments in Committee in the early hours, at 12.30 am, on Tuesday 30 March. I was unwise enough to suggest then that that was the graveyard shift, and this was picked up by social media. I regret to tell your Lordships that the considered response of the social media world was that the graveyard was where all Members of your Lordships’ House should go, and go quickly. I recognise that my amendment then tabled was too draconian—a super-affirmative procedure which the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, very effectively torpedoed, but I think that there is need for additional work here.
Amendments 70 and 71, and Amendment 72 which we will come to in a later group, are well worth considering. I do not propose to repeat the arguments that have been advanced for them, and recognise that the Government have made some small concessions,
but if my noble friend on the Front Bench—I am not quite clear who will wind up on this group—is to persuade me not to support Amendments 70 and 71, I need an explanation why the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which rejected the Government’s proposals as inadequate in House of Lords Paper 124, is wrong. In particular, can it be right that, as the committee puts it at paragraph 6:
“the ultimate arbiter of whether the Government are using the appropriate parliamentary procedure is the Government”?
I hope that the Government will not fall back on the rather strange argument, raised again by the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, that such a procedure as is proposed in the amendments might lead to a loss of confidence by the House in its committee structure—an argument also advanced by my noble friend the Leader of the House in our debates on 19 and 20 March at column 154, but roundly dismissed by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in the report that I just mentioned.
I would like to support the Government, but I need some reassurance before I can.