My Lords, I strongly support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and everything he said. I fear that, given the welter of things happening in politics at the moment, this kind of Bill is getting through without proper scrutiny and that many people, in both Houses, do not realise the importance and far-reaching implications of what we are considering. We are therefore very grateful to people like the noble Lord, Lord Marks, for drawing attention to this issue. I am astonished that this has apparently got through unchallenged in the other place. Many of my colleagues—with the notable exceptions of my noble friend Lady Thornton and her colleagues on the Front Bench—have not realised what an urgent matter this is.
I arrived late on Tuesday and was unable to participate in the debate on the first amendment. I missed the wonderful speech by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. He raised the issue again at Question Time today and was answered by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, who is with us. Astonishingly, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said on Tuesday and said again today:
“The harsh reality is summarised in the fact that it is exactly 40 years since the other place rejected a statutory instrument—40 years”.—[Official Report, 19/2/19; col. 2172.]
For the last 40 years, we have been dealing with legislation without the ability to amend it. Whether the procedure is affirmative or negative—I will come to that later—does not matter: we have not had the opportunity to amend it. What happens? The statutory instrument is drawn up by civil servants and put forward to Parliament by the Government. What is Parliament asked to do? You have to agree it or
not—and if you do not agree it, you get threats. You get people saying, “This is a killer amendment” or, “This is a killer resolution”. That happened yesterday, I think, on a couple of statutory instruments, and the amendments were not moved in the end.
So we have a take it or leave it situation with statutory instruments, unlike with primary legislation. When the subject was raised, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, said that it was a much wider issue—it had been raised in the wider context. A trickle of SIs has become a flood. More and more issues that ought to be dealt with by primary legislation are being dealt with by secondary legislation. The more that happens, the bigger the transfer of power from the legislature to the Executive. That is exactly what the Government are doing. I ask them to think carefully. This Conservative Government will not be in power for ever. I hope some people agree with me on that—somebody say, “Hear, hear”.