My Lords, I was not intending to speak, but I was prompted by the challenge from the noble Baroness who represents the Greens, who spoke with great erudition, expertise and passion and is a credit to the House for that. It is important that we look at the general principles. Of course, we are talking about environmental regulations amendments, but I sometimes feel that I am the only sane person in the asylum, frankly. We are a sovereign Parliament, yet we are pushing back on the idea of governing and holding the Executive to account, as if we are not able to do that.
If noble Lords look at the preamble to the Bill, it is not about casting aside these regulations; it is not about traducing those regulations and the Great British tradition of environmental protection and health and safety; it is about modifying, restating, replacing and updating. The fact is that even the EU, when developing regulations, was always developing them on an iterative basis; it did not have the regulations ossified 30 or 40 years ago; it was always developing them—even the REACH regulations that the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, mentioned earlier. Therefore, it is exactly the same process that this Government are going to pursue.
The idea that Ministers are not accountable at the Dispatch Box for bringing forward or updating regulations is clearly nonsense: they will always be. I have to disabuse the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, of the idea that this has not been properly debated in the other place. First, it passed Third Reading by 53 votes, and he may not know that there was an enormous campaign from NGOs and charities aimed at wavering Members of Parliament. So the idea that it was sneaked through and disregarded by the greater electorate is absolutely not the case.
There is an idea, too, that we are writing a blank cheque. Having considered the Bill in the other place and here, and having considered other committee reports, including from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and the Select Committee on the Constitution, there have been hours and hours of debate. To then, when it gets to this House, say “We don’t like the Bill, so let’s just ignore it”, would plunge this House into a very bad place in terms of democratic accountability.
The criticism from the people in this country is that our politicians are not up to the job of governing, and, at the end of the day, that is what we have to do. We have to govern. We have to make a decision. The challenge, as was shown only yesterday in what the Prime Minister brought back in the Windsor agreement, is that we can make Brexit work. It is not ignoble for many Members to take a view that Brexit was a mistake—many Members in this Committee take that view—but, nevertheless, this is a Bill about accountability
and keeping that bond of democratic accountability and trust with the electorate. I think some Members of your Lordships’ House need to understand and concede my final point, which is that this Government would be crazy to go into a process of reducing—