My Lords, perhaps it would be helpful for me to speak to my Amendment 12, which in effect restates in combination the points just made in support of Amendments 11, 15 and 16. I will also refer to Amendment 20, which deals with a related issue.
I think I saw that the noble Lord, Lord Lang, was about to rise to his feet and the background to my Amendment 12 is paragraph 38 of the Constitution Committee’s report, which draws attention to problems with the Sewel convention as his committee saw them. One problem was the use of “normally”, which gives rise to doubt as to what exactly that means. There was also the need to clarify the reach of the convention, which was the point just made in support of Amendment 11 and its related amendments. My Amendment 12 puts together in a package the same point that was referred to on those other amendments.
Amendment 20, however, deals with an issue which is closely related to existing practice. It refers to a:
“Duty to consult the Scottish Government on Bills applying to Scotland”.
It says, shortly, that:
“A Minister of the Crown must not introduce a Bill into the Parliament of the United Kingdom … that would make provision applying to Scotland unless a Minister of the Crown has consulted the Scottish Ministers”.
It is intended to reflect what I understand to be the existing practice and to follow on the points made in relation to restating Clause 2 in appropriate statutory language.
I should make it clear, as I did earlier on this afternoon, that the amendments to which I am speaking are in words that were in effect provided for me by the Scottish Government because they were tabled in June this year, in advance of Committee in the House of Commons. But I restate that I do not speak to these amendments on behalf of anybody other than myself; I simply see them as sensible amendments which have merit on their own wording. It is with that in mind that I speak to these two amendments.