My Lords, as colleagues know, I had the privilege of being Deputy Speaker in the House of Commons for five years, and of course Erskine May was my bible. Indeed, one had to refer to it pretty regularly during the Maastricht Bill procedures. Just as an aside, Erskine May went to Bedford School, as I did, and history has it that he was the only Clerk of the House of Commons who managed to get Big Ben silenced in the middle of the night. However, that is by the by.
We are dealing with trade, industry and markets here; we are not dealing with life-threatening situations that obviously require anything that comes forward to be looked at in a practical manner. Only in the last few days, we have had news of the future trade agreement with Japan, which has just been signed. The agreement makes it clear that the deal that has been settled between the UK and Japan goes far beyond our existing agreement with the EU.
However, of relevance to this amendment is a letter which I have received and which went to all Peers. On the second page, under the heading “Parliamentary transparency and scrutiny, next steps”, the letter says,
“we have shared the full UK-Japan Partnership Agreement treaty text with both the International Agreements Sub-Committee in the House of Lords and the International Trade Committee in the House of Commons. This is to aid the committees’ important scrutiny work and the production of reports by them on the agreement.”
That is a practical example, in the last few days, of the way in which the Government are proceeding. I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, that that rather shoots the fox that he produced earlier—that nobody knew what they were doing and that they did not have a strategy, et cetera. That is a practical example.
Like my noble friend Lady McIntosh, I looked again this morning at what Erskine May says about the affirmative procedures. They are pretty straightforward. Traditionally, there were three variations. The first is used where something has to take place on an SI immediately—we have seen the need for that in relation to Covid—and there is usually a specified period by which it should not continue. It has obviously expanded since the days when I was in the Chair: then, it was about 40 days, and now, it appears to be almost six months, but that is by the by.
Then there is the more normal procedure in which a draft is laid before both Houses, not to be made and have effect unless one or both Houses present an Address to the Crown praying for the order to be made or for agreement to resolutions approving the draft instrument. Therefore, there is already a whole host of procedures whereby anything that comes forward can be debated before it is voted on. The key thing is that it is voted on.
As I have said in our earlier sessions, I have been a marketing man and a trading man. We really do not want yet another hurdle—in this case, the super-affirmative procedure—that just creates more delay, and to my mind this degree of consultation on an issue that was causing a problem to one of the devolved Assemblies, a particular industry or a particular trade would do that. Any of us in trade or business knows that if you have a
problem, you put it to the Government of the day and you say that the present procedures are not working. There are already safeguards, as I have indicated; in my judgment, you certainly do not need yet another layer of safeguard unless it is a matter of life and death.
I am sorry. I have to say to my noble friend that I cannot possibly agree with this; I think that it is way over the top. If it is taken to a vote, I will certainly vote against it.