I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate and for the various points that have been made; I hope it is not discourteous if I try to summarise them without individual attribution.
Fundamentally, this union is not going to hold together unless there is an acceptance of equality of treatment, and this Bill drives a coach and horses through that. One illustration suffices: if this Parliament, for England, makes a subsidy scheme that infringes the subsidy control principles, then those overseas cannot challenge it, but they can challenge what is done in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. That is not equality. A second, more vivid example of equality is the ability to make streamlined subsidy schemes. Part of the difficulty we face is that all of this is for future legislation, but we are now trespassing into the constitution.
What has emerged from the questions that the Minister has tried to answer is this: where are we going in areas of devolved competence? He says that no
Government would want to do it, but we are a country governed by the rule of law, and the law ought to be clear as to the constitutional responsibilities of the Government of the United Kingdom and of England and the constitutional responsibilities and powers of the devolved nations. This has not been thought through, as is evident from the Minister’s reply. I do not criticise him, because we do not have the detail of the streamlined subsidy schemes so that we could see how this would work.
Thirdly, we are trespassing into dangerous constitutional areas. I am sure that many lawyers will not accept that, if the Government tried to make a streamlined subsidy scheme that infringed on devolved competence, it would be challenged, because that would be made under subordinate legislation and would not have the equivalent status of an Act of this Parliament. It is a great misfortune that we have not thought all of this through.
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That is finally illustrated by the curious Schedule 3. All law students were taught about a 19th century piece of legislation where an unfortunate town clerk who had an unhappy marriage put into the schedule to a waterworks or harbour Bill the words “and the town clerk’s marriage is hereby dissolved”, because divorce was not readily available in the UK. In a sense, very important constitutional issues have been shoved—I apologise for using that slightly familiar term—into Schedule 3 of a similar status. They have not been thought through, and this Parliament ought not to pass legislation of that kind. I hope that we will debate all these matters again. My noble and learned friend Lord Hope has underlined the importance of the constitutional issues, and we need to return to them before we make another mess in another Bill.
Having said all that, although I would like to talk for much longer about these important issues, I seek leave to withdraw the amendment.