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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

I am most grateful to the Minister and to other noble Lords who have spoken. Let me say first of all to the noble Lord, Lord Desai, that I think that he misunderstood me. If he did so, that must surely be my fault rather than his because I never find that he misunderstands anything which is clearly set out. The 1972 Act gives huge powers, but only to do that which Brussels demands. It does not give huge powers for this Parliament to conceive something which should be done, and to do it without reference to our partners or, as we sometimes think of them, our masters in Brussels. As my noble friend Lord Waddington said, my amendment really would need the new clause he proposes in his Amendment No. 30, which we will discuss later this afternoon, to be effective and to make it work. As I said when I introduced the amendment, of course it will require many substantial consequential amendments. I confess that I did not think that perhaps it was a wise use of my time to spend too much energy on those consequential amendments at this stage. As my noble friend on the Front Bench said, this amendment would confine the Bill solely to what I would broadly call Brussels legislation. The advantage of that is that it would enable this Bill to pass through quickly without any undue controversy and limited in what it is set out to do. Then we could settle down with a little more leisure to think what we should be doing on all those other regulations. I think that a common consent is beginning to emerge that it might be much better to amend the 2001 Act, which would be less troublesome and controversial than this Bill—and, as Members of the Committee know, nothing upsets me more than controversy. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, said that, if I had my way, we would find ourselves facing the problem of having to deal with 24 sets of import regulations if we did not abide by what Brussels said. That is not so. By definition, it would be only 23, and unless the other 23 powers left the European Union they would all have one identical set of regulations. I say that in passing. I detect that if I put this to a Division this afternoon I might not get a majority. On the other hand, this Chamber is famed for its sober consideration and thought, and perhaps after sober consideration and thought if I were to bring this back on Report people would see what an absolutely splendid amendment it was. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.