Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

Indeed. It is undesirable that fast-track procedures should be regarded as the best way in which to go about things—we have been through the argument already, and we may well vote against that proposal on Third Reading—but it is important to establish and reassert a principle. We have not had many opportunities to do that in the context of a substantive Government Bill to which amendments can be tabled for purposes of clarity. Let me say this to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe, a distinguished chairman of the Conservative party’s democracy commission. It would not be good enough to assert—if he were to do so—that what I propose is not possible through the legislative supremacy of the House of Commons. He cannot avoid the fact that what I am saying is good constitutional law of the United Kingdom.