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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

My Lords, I am entirely in favour of consolidation; there is too little of it at the moment, and it would be a great help if it were available in some shape or form. I dare say that it will be on the website but, never mind, that is better than nothing. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Desai and Lord Kingsland, for their support. It does not matter whether it is a regulation or a directive, the trouble in the transposition arises in exactly the same way. In neither case does the parliamentary Clerk—or not usually—put into the British statutory instrument anything which says what the offence is. I am very glad that I was supported by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, on Article 7 of the European convention. I believe that that is at the heart of the matter. It is not right that people should not be able to discover—or at any rate without the most colossal trouble—what they are not allowed to do, which is subject to criminal sanctions. It certainly is not transparent. I will happily talk to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Davidson, about this. If he is concerned only with directives, we will have to deal with that, but it does not matter very much, as this involves both sorts of European instruments are involved. I hope that these two short debates will ensure that somebody in the Cabinet Office will tell parliamentary Clerks that there is good practice. I have given two examples of it, and the noble Lord has acknowledged that. I tried to do that in Committee but it was brushed aside as being perfectly hopeless, airy-fairy and nothing other than confusing. However, that does not seem to be the case, as sometimes, but by no means always, parliamentary Clerks continue to put summaries of the offence in schedules. Why can’t we have a new instruction across the board that that should always be done? Then someone has, at any rate, the beginning of an idea where to look for the actions that they must avoid if they are not to get into trouble. If that is what the noble Lord is telling me he will set afoot, I will not return to the matter. However, I promise him that the reports of the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee will continue to look at this. It has not gone away and there is no sign whatever of it improving as a result of anything that has been said. Please, look again at what the Joint Committee said in 2001 and see whether something can be done about it. The noble Lord nods his head and I am sure that he will probably get something done. I hope that he may communicate with me a little further before Third Reading next week—it is also on a Thursday, so I shall be in the same trouble as I am today.