Scotland Bill

I do not think that that is the way to transfer backwards. That may be possible; I will have to check. It may be possible to go in the opposite direction. I am trying to think whether that has ever actually happened. When the Arts and Humanities Research Council was established, because it had not hitherto existed and because under the scheme of devolution it was a devolved as opposed to a reserved matter, an order had to be brought forward to establish that it would be a UK parliamentary responsibility. I am not sure that it was a Section 30 order. The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, may have been involved at the time. I certainly was, because I took the order through the Scottish Parliament. The important point is that it changes the devolution settlement. It changes the boundaries between devolved and reserved powers. That is why it requires the consent of both Houses of Parliament and the Scottish Parliament before it proceeds to Her Majesty in Council. I hope that I have shown that there is a distinction between that and a legislative consent Motion, which is by its nature a convention. On the basis of those explanations and the undertakings that I have given to try to identify ways in which we can discuss the matter in more detail—