The noble Baroness is of course right to refer to the first report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. When it considered abolition, in paragraphs 6 and 7 of the report, and Clause 16(2), it stated:
“This provision illustrates the unusual nature of this Bill”.
It then goes back to its opening paragraph, which states:
“If the Competition Commission revoked the Order containing the groceries code, the Act would serve no purpose so it could be repealed. There would be no great point of principle involved in its repeal, for the Act is wholly dependent on the Order”.
The committee’s view was very much informed by the weirdness—which I referred to earlier—of setting up in primary legislation a quasi-referee to govern a code that Parliament has no power to scrutinise.
It is entirely appropriate and comparable with the Public Bodies Bill, which was about the bonfire of the quangos and the Government having the power in secondary legislation to get rid of quangos that they had set up in primary legislation. In this primary legislation we are setting up a quango. In Clause 16 the Government are seeking to use just the affirmative procedure if they want to abolish it. It is entirely consistent with the Public Bodies Act to argue for the super-affirmative procedure.