Clause 21 - Scope of emergency regulations
Civil Contingencies Bill
9:30 am
Mr Richard Allan (Shadow Spokesperson for the Cabinet Office, Cabinet Office; Sheffield, Hallam, Liberal Democrat)
The hon. Gentleman is entirely correct. Perhaps a further refinement would be for the Government to accept the amendments and then give themselves the power to add or remove pieces of legislation from the list. Such a power could be debated in the House as a regulation in the normal fashion. He is correct that to suggest that there should not be a fear of trying to define constitutional legislation. If we have defined it a little too widely—and there were odd bits and pieces in the 1972 Act that the Government might wish to amend in an emergency—including it in the schedule as suggested would merely require them to wait until they could introduce regulations in the normal fashion. All that we are denying them is the power to make an emergency regulation, not the power to amend the legislation. That can happen in the normal fashion.
The Government used that argument in their response. They said:
''The Government is aware of no precedent in legislation for doing so''—
that is, for defining constitutional Acts. The response went on:
''This reflects the constitutional history of the United Kingdom. There is no written constitution.''
I find that collection of sentences interesting. They say that there is no precedent, but that there is also no written constitution. If we put the two together, we can say that, under the British constitution—such as it is—things happen by precedent, so there is no reason why the Bill should not establish one; precedents have to start somewhere, otherwise we would be in a completely frozen constitutional situation.