My Lords, I will speak briefly to the two amendments in my name, Amendments 14 and 18. I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, the noble Lord, Lord Stephen, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, for adding their names to Amendment 14.
I think we are all aiming for the same thing: clarity and the removal of ambiguity. The one thing that struck me when I was looking at the Bill for the first time was the use of the word “normally”. It is not a
very good legal word; indeed it is a word that could, as those who know far more about the law than I do have said repeatedly, be challenged in the courts. In these two amendments, I have sought to remove that word entirely and to give, in Amendment 18, a specific exception. I do not suggest that this is the only answer or necessarily the best one. I listened carefully to what my noble friend Lord Lang said a moment or two ago, but I would delete “normally” and insert at the end,
“save in times of war or national emergency”.
It is accepted in the Bill that there could be occasions when the United Kingdom Parliament, which has absolute sovereignty, would need to override the Scottish Parliament. None of us wants that to happen—and certainly not often—but if we recognise that that can or could happen, we have to be a little clearer with our definitions. I believe that by removing “normally” and inserting a couple of specifics, we are moving in the right direction. It is in that spirit that I commend these amendments to your Lordships’ House.
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