I first thank my noble friend Lady Thornton for her words in support of the amendment and the noble Lord, Lord Patel, who was hoping to field an impressive cast list in this debate. I thought he did very well; I have always thought he would make a first-class lawyer—he should take that as a compliment.
At the heart of it, as he and the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, said, this is a constitutional point: the advice we have had from a House of Lords Select Committee is that what the Government are proposing is constitutionally unacceptable. While the Minister’s amendments are always welcome, the fact remains that the Bill, after the Government’s amendments, would allow Ministers to create completely new criminal offences and make changes to existing offences. The Minister kindly explained this, but here we get to the heart of this Bill and the problem that many of us have with it. She talked about novel regulation and the need to keep pace with developments. I understand that.
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The problem is that what the Government want is carte blanche to change regulation in this field via the use of regulation. In effect it is Executive diktat. They can at any time come along and change the regulatory framework through regulations, and they want the offences regime to match it. I understand that, and it brings us back to our fundamental objection to the Bill and why we will come back to the sunset clause. This is not acceptable. We cannot have a situation
where the Government can make major changes in a regulatory regime simply through regulation that Parliament has no ability to do anything about in practice. The Government add to the problem by then saying, “And we can make changes to the offences as well, subject to the provisions about the cap the Government have brought in”. That is why this is so important. We have had a short debate. It would have been longer. I think it will be on Report. The Government should be in no doubt that this causes a great deal of anxiety and that ultimately, I do not think we accept the basic premise on which the Bill is being brought forward. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.