My Lords, if the Ministers shepherding this Bill expected an easy ride, this gives a taste of things to come. It serves a purpose in setting the scene, and a lot of arguments and debates will come in other groups as we go through this process. I shall not labour those points. An overriding sense I got from my noble friend Lord Purvis is that the question everybody wants to know the answer to is: why have Her Majesty’s Government decided to turn away from a process of managing markets that has been extremely successful? It was successful before we joined the European Union and successful afterwards. This is the overriding question that hangs over this whole debate.
On Amendments 1 and 112, if ever we needed convincing that things such as the environment need to be written into the Bill, the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, convinced me that they do. This is because we cannot take things for granted. Governments come and Governments go, but the law stays, and we need to be sure that our public policy is being directed properly. I uncharacteristically find myself somewhat agreeing with the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes: we have to be careful not to constrain the nature of this Bill. We need to find a way to write in issues such as those of the consumer and the environment. I would
add some of the points made by my noble friend Lady Bowles and food safety to that. We need to ensure that there is an assessment of the success of this internal market in some of those areas, including the environment, the effect on consumers, the effect on jobs, et cetera. I share the view of my noble friend Lady Bowles that perhaps more work is needed, but the issue is live and very important. I thank the proposers of the amendment.
Turning to Amendment 2, I do not think proportionality pops up anywhere in other amendments. We had a brief discussion of this extremely important subject from various speakers. I take my lead on this from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, who understands the law, and my noble friend Lady Bowles, who knows a thing or two about regulation. If they are concerned about proportionality, so are we on these Benches. The Government need to find a way of writing that issue into the Bill.
On public procurement, we need to understand what the Government mean by what they seek to do in this legislation. The issue highlighted by my noble friend Lord Purvis is live and real: how will this legislation affect those issues? It is a probing amendment, but for it to work we need answers.
We have started. There are issues we shall return to, but proportionality and public procurement are two on which I hope the Minister will respond at length.