My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s reply to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, which I will come to in a moment. He was extremely dismissive of legislative powers to implement international trade agreements having sunset clauses. He has just taken through the Trade Act, which has exactly those clauses in it. The power there is a five-year sunset, and a regulation can extend it to no more than a further five years. This is to protect exactly that kind
of scrutiny of these changing agreements, so that Parliament, if there are changes in that period, has an opportunity to scrutinise them again. All I was asking for was some form of comparable treatment in this Bill, which he is taking through, to the one he has just taken through on the rollover agreements. I cannot for the life of me think why he championed them in the latter and now dismisses them in the former.
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On the breadth of the Clause 3 powers, on my reading and having listened to the Minister’s speech, I would be grateful if he could indicate whether I am wrong that, while 50 regulators and 160 professions regulated by law are covered by Clause 1, the other 90 regulators of the 140 professions cited under the impact assessment—not the legal framework—could now be within the scope of powers of duties imposed on them by Clause 3. Without there being any restrictions in Clause 3 on the duties of or obligations on all regulated professions, statutory or otherwise—these could include new duties on current non-legislative regulators—and without there being protections regarding their independence in Clause 3, are they all now potentially within the scope of these powers?