Clause 2 - Provision
Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill
1:15 pm
David Howarth (Shadow Minister, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Cambridge, Liberal Democrat)
I want to cover four separate aspects of the amendments. The first is sub-delegation, which is raised in amendment No. 45. the second is the purpose for which the Bill might be used, to which we refer in amendment No. 46. The third is the new clause and the new schedule, which constitute the first of two attempts to restrict the power of the Government to use the Bill to deal with particular Acts of Parliament, which would be protected from the order-making power in the Bill. Finally, as the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) mentioned, there is the series of new clauses about important aspects of the law, including civil liberties law. We hope that the Government will, in each case, either tell us why they want to be able to use the power in the Bill to overturn or overcome it, or accept the amendment because they have no desire to use the power.
Let me start with amendment No. 45. In a way, it is consequential or additional to the amendment that seeks to remove part of clause 2. It seeks to remove clause 2(2)(a), which allows legislative functions to be conferred on other persons, and to replace it with its opposite: that no order under the Bill shall confer on any person the power to legislate. Why do the Government want a power to transfer legislative authority to any person? It is bad enough that they want a power to change primary legislation by statutory instrument. How much worse is it that legislative power might be transferred to another person who, as far as I can tell, will be able to make further legislative change without a statutory instrument or any parliamentary scrutiny at all? In many ways, that is the most dangerous part of the Bill.
We are considering the transfer of legislative power to people who are not even Ministers, so would not be capable of being questioned by the House about any use of the power granted to them under the clause. Who are those people? If the Minister will tell us, perhaps we can attempt to write something into the Bill that will accord with his wishes.