Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

I am glad to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) in his remarks. I, too, have reservations about the principal objective of this Bill, which is to have a fast-track procedure for dealing with matters that is very far-reaching even with the changes proposed in new clause 19, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) and other hon. Members have said. The fact is that this is a very invasive Bill. No doubt we shall wait to see what happens on Third Reading, when all our other debates have been concluded. In an earlier intervention, I said that there was a vast omission—indeed, a black hole—in the proposal before us, which has been dressed up and presented as a deregulatory measure to reduce the burdens on business. That raises some practical questions. I am delighted to say that some six weeks ago, 50 of my right hon. and hon. Friends put their names to my amendments, which would ensure that we got the clarification in our own law that would enable us, where necessary and after appropriate negotiations—it would be done in a responsible and prudential fashion—to insist that we should deregulate on our own terms at Westminster and make it law in this country, binding on the judiciary and overriding the requirements of section 2 of the European Communities Act 1972 in that regard. Having spoken to senior advisers in the House, I understand that this is the first time that an amendment of this significance has been selected for debate since 1972. There was an attempt, during the passage of the 1972 Act, to table an amendment that proposed that nothing in the Act should derogate from the sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament. Some of us will recall the Single European Act that was passed in 1986. I tabled a similar amendment to that legislation. It was on the Order Paper, and my name remained in splendid isolation until I walked into the Lobby on the afternoon of the debate, where a certain very distinguished parliamentarian came up to me and said, in his inimitable fashion, ““I think you will be interested to see that I have put my name to your amendment.”” Of course, it was none other than the right hon. Enoch Powell. He perfectly understood the object of the exercise. Despite the best efforts of the European Scrutiny Committee and the European Standing Committees, the present volume of European legislation, and the fast-track procedures that are used to introduce that legislation into the House, are such that the accusations made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe about the reduction—and, some would say, the redaction—of our legislation within the procedures set out in our Standing Orders could easily be explained in terms of the European legislation that we have to accept under section 2 of the European Communities Act. That legislation receives scrutiny, but if anyone ever attempts to do anything about it by voting against a particular provision in a European Standing Committee, the House immediately reverses the decision. Many people, including me, regard those procedures as a waste of parliamentary opportunity.