It is a chaotic mess. They are making it up as they go along. We understand that officials are not only still dabbling around desperately trying to find EU law but thinking about what to do with each instrument once they have found it—whether it should be junked, preserved or altered. That is an odd way of putting the cart before the horse. Why was the Bill ever submitted if there was no idea of what was going to happen to EU law? I will add to my adjectives: the Bill is higgledy-piggledy and all over the place.
Finally, I wanted to raise another point for the Minister to answer. I am grateful to George Peretz KC for raising this point. We will come back to Clause 1 in future groups, but it is entirely relevant here to raise it. The definition of EU-derived subordinate legislation that is to be sunsetted in Clause 1(4) is
“any domestic subordinate legislation so far as … it was made under section 2(2)”
or another provision of the
“European Communities Act 1972, or … it was made”
otherwise, in
“implementation of EU obligations”.
But one problem is that sometimes an SI was made partly under Section 2(2) of the ECA and partly on another legal basis. Are those all going to be, whether this list is authoritative or comprehensive, or when it is finally arrived at—
5.15 pm