My Lords, I think this is a case of “follow that”. I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, starting with my noble friend Lord Fox, who quoted the gem of ministerial gobbledegook about the status of the dashboard; it is an “authoritative catalogue”, not a “comprehensive list”. I have had time to look it up in a thesaurus and I do not want to disappoint the Minister but a catalogue is a “complete list of items”.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, referred to the importance of consumer confidence, which I was attempting to draw attention to in the precise details I included in my amendments.
The noble Lord, Lord Deben, referred to the importance of case law. I greatly regret that the Government have got themselves so far on the back foot with the Bill that there was an attempted ministerial intervention to shut down the debate and force him to draw his comments to a close. This was of course rather ironic, given that we have not been provided with a specialist Transport Minister on the Front Bench to answer on the specific transport issues that I was trying to raise. I have some sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Deben, in his crisis over his Conservative identity—but that is not my business.
My noble friend Lady Ludford made some important points about identifying what is actually EU law. We will come on to this later, but there are some real doubts about what law is EU law, because it has been incorporated into other aspects of our law.
I sympathise with noble Lords who suggest that the Government should give themselves a break, park the Bill for a few weeks and work out how it will work before they bring it back. I would like it to go altogether, but I am trying to take a reasonable line, from the Government’s point of view.
The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, suggested that the letter we had was a spoof. One reason why the debate has been as it has is that that letter was designed to raise far more questions than provide answers.
The noble Lord, Lord Collins, also referred to the issue of confidence. I assure him, from evidence that came to the Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee, that it was pretty evident that National Archives did a word search to find the list. It is no good noble Lords shaking their heads; that is how National Archives got to the list.
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I turn very briefly to the Minister’s valiant efforts and thank her for the reassurances that she was able to give. I will read Hansard very carefully and hope that there will be a follow-up letter, if not from her then from the Department for Transport, clarifying its plans. But this is not reassurance for us; it is reassurance for consumers, passengers, drivers, the automobile manufacturing industry and the aviation industry generally.
My understanding is that legislation passed by the devolved Administrations is not included in the dashboard. The Minister said that what was not on the dashboard was not important, but I say that legislation passed by those Administrations is just as important as legislation passed for England.
Finally, whether it is a child sitting in a car, a worker planning their well-deserved summer holiday or a manufacturer looking internationally for a site for their next factory, they all deserve a UK Government with their eyes firmly fixed on the highest standards for the future. With this Bill, the Government are condemning Parliament, the devolved Administrations, the Civil Service, the business community, citizens and civil society to months and years of wrangling over the decisions of the past, when we should be looking to the future and modernising. This is an ideologically driven wrecking Bill that will undermine key sections of our economy and our expectation of a safe and modern society.
The Government think they have a cunning plan to ensure that these fundamental changes to legislation, across almost every sector of our economy and society, will ensure that no future Government are able to rejoin the EU; the task would be simply too great. But, like all Baldrick’s cunning plans, it has backfired, because the Bill has alerted ordinary citizens, civil society and the business community to the importance and value of EU legislation. It simply confirms to many people who probably had not thought about it much before, the growing view that Brexit was a disastrous mistake. I will of course withdraw my Amendment 7, but I am sure that we will come back to these issues on Report.