My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s response and for those of everyone who has contributed to this short debate. There is a fundamental disagreement of principle with the Government, in that, if they are seeking powers such as this, it should be as a result of agreement. These powers should be powers to implement anything that is agreed.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Bew, that we should be legislating to implement the results of the negotiations. Legislation should not be tactical: that is not the point of legislation, and it will never be good if it is. Therefore, this is really quite important to bear in mind. If formal mechanisms have been exhausted, we legislate—but only after agreement or exhaustion of it. The noble Lord seems very confident that negotiations are taking place, but I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay: we have not heard the Government say that they are
negotiating; they are describing them as “technical talks”. These include the “technical talks” about the application of the protocol. Do noble Lords remember “to fix it, not mix it” and “to mend it, not end it”? They are not my words but Ministers’ words. So negotiations are not taking place; “technical talks” are taking place. Yet Parliament is being asked to give Ministers powers to make primary law under regulations as a result of “technical talks”; that is jarring.
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The Minister said that the protocol must work for all people in Northern Ireland. I agree. He then said, it is clearly not. Part of the challenge that has to be squared, of course, is that it seems as if the protocol is clearly not working for some people but is for others. How you square that should not be through very broad order-making powers for Ministers. We should come back to trying to build consensus and agreement to make these sustainable. It is the lack of sustainability that we on these Benches fear. We will, of course, return to these issues later but in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.