My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, after that interruption. I thank her for seconding my amendment that Clause 42 not stand part of the Bill.
I find myself seeking new metaphors. We have all been through Henry VIII on steroids. I cannot remember which Bill I was talking about when I referred to Henry VIII on steroids with rockets strapped to his boots. Here, we now have Henry VIII on steroids with rockets strapped to his boots and placed in a catapult, because this is an utterly extreme Henry VIII clause. I
fear that noble Lords will feel we are having déjà vu all over again. In the last group of amendments, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, quoted many of the reflections of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s report. It is worth looking at paragraph 4, which states:
“The Bill contains 28 delegated powers in just 48 clauses.”
It is not really surprising, therefore, that we are going to be hearing a lot of speeches which sound pretty similar.
I want to make a particular case for the removal of Clause 42. Subsection (1) states:
“Regulations may make supplementary, incidental or consequential provision in connection with any provision of or made under this Act.”
Essentially, anything goes. I am not a lawyer, although I have learned quite a bit about law in the last three years. As I understand it, this clause says that the Minister can do whatever they like.
It may be said that Clause 42(3) states that this is under the affirmative procedure. I refer noble Lords to what happened yesterday with voter ID. It demonstrated just how effectively this House is or is not able to scrutinise secondary legislation. We do not have an effective power of scrutiny. This is the reality. We could just say that we could pass this Bill and then regulations could change anything we like—supplementary, incidental or consequential. If this is so, there is simply no way that Clause 42 should stay part of this Bill.