My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his response and the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for his comments. We are trying to get a consensus. During our first debate in Committee, I was described as the hard cop. I really am hard as regards this issue. We have to think very carefully about including a clause such as this. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said that it was simply not justified, that there had been no attempt to justify it and that there was no control over it. He suggested that this clause could enable a future Secretary of State to repeal a whole Act of Parliament in the future. However, I totally endorse what the noble Lord, Lord True, and other noble Lords have said about the integrity of my noble friend the Minister in the Lords.
My noble friend has said that we ought to look at past experience. I am not interested in past experience. I am interested in the future. I am interested in this Bill and what could be done by a Secretary of State who does not have much integrity. Such a Secretary of State could wipe out the whole of this Bill. That is not respectful to Parliament. We are parliamentarians. We shape, discuss and put forward amendments. We agree and we disagree. In the end, we hope that we produce legislation that is good for this country. My noble friend and I had a very brief conversation outside the Grand Committee in which he talked about successive Governments. I say gently that just because a person has a bad habit does not mean that that habit should be condoned. It should be checked and better behaviour should be encouraged. I encourage the Government to mend their errant ways and follow the path of the righteous. To be righteous is to respect Parliament and not introduce these sorts of dangerous clauses. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, used the words “dangerous” and “unjustified”. Nobody has spoken in favour of this clause. When I read in Hansard the words used by judges and learned people who know the whole system and have worked in Parliament with the Constitution Committee and so on, it sends shivers down my back.
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I also thank the noble Lords, Lord Thomas of Gresford and Lord Stunell, and my noble friend Lord True, and totally agree with them about the distrust of the planning system. I am involved in the National Health Service and in health generally, where there is a lot of science. A huge amount of research goes on and there are a lot of data, so that when we discuss things, we have a whole body of knowledge. I am not saying that planners do not have a body of knowledge, but there is not a lot of science in planning. There is a lot of opinion and a lot of views, so when we are doing something like this, we have to be even more careful if we are going to maintain the trust of the people of this country.
To use again the words used by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, this is a flawed part of the Bill—a flawed clause. It has no business being in the Bill. I have to say that unless my noble friend comes up with something really good, I will bring this back on Report, because we should not allow this sort of clause to be in this Bill or future Bills.