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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

My Lords, thank goodness that there is that minor check. The problem is that Ministers should not have that power. I draw to the noble Lord’s attention a quotation from the great Gibbon, who says:"““The principles of a free constitution are irrevocably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive””." That is Gibbon on Augustus Caesar. Those rules are as serious now as they were then. This Bill must be given very, very serious—and, I hope, damaging—consideration in Committee. It is too much to allow Ministers to have that power, even when it is circumscribed in the way that it is. We are all in Parliament to stop Ministers doing things. Ministers must get from Parliament the authority to do things and do so properly. They cannot expect us to lie back and let them have these over-inflated powers.