My Lords, the impetus started a long time before the Williams review. It is quite some time since I had a proper clear out of my filing cabinet in this building, and when I last did—many years ago—I found a whole lot of material relating to consolidation. I cannot remember whether I kept it or not. If the impetus had been acted on then, there would have been no need for the Wendy Williams recommendation or, more importantly, for what we all know happened to have happened. I thank the Minister for that really interesting response. I had not begun to appreciate the context of this clause, which is no doubt because of my failure to look at all the relevant information, as I could have done if I had researched it.
I take this opportunity to make a point about the regulations to which the Minister has referred, which will be necessary to enable the work that is being undertaken by the Law Commission. I ask that the Explanatory Memorandum for each of those statutory instruments—I assume that that is what they will be—explains fully why each is being proposed. Otherwise, it will be impossible for the outside world and difficult for our pressed Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee to understand what is going on and give the appropriate responses.
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The Minister started by saying that this would remove the regulation-making power. Of course, that was done in order to enable the amendment that I
proposed, which was for a different approach to consolidation—I just want to make that clear. The Constitution Committee welcomed the general purpose of the clause and urged the Government to proceed with consolidating immigration law, but it said that
“this does not get to the root of the problem, which is that the law in this area needs to be simplified and made more intelligible. We urge the Government to prioritise simplification, in addition to consolidation. As part of this process the Government should consider imposing a greater degree of parliamentary scrutiny over delegated powers relating to immigration law, including the immigration rules under section 3(2) of the Immigration Act 1971.”
That will be a familiar plea or cry. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.