I support the amendment in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and Amendment 26. The point about consultation is extremely important, especially as it seems obvious that a lot more SIs will not fit easily into the dispose or
retain buckets, and arrangements have to be made for that. One thing that has struck me forcefully as we have gone through this process so far is the whole scope of this Bill—the enormous numbers of interrelationships between EU retained law, domestic law and international law, and with the devolved Administrations as well. It is growing more and more complex by the amendment.
Throughout the debate we have heard a lot of different arguments as to why this arbitrary deadline is simply not going to work. Possibly it was understood that it would never work when it was proposed, but it may have been a sort of discipline to focus the mind. Either way, it is disingenuous, and I would have thought that by now the Minister would have had so much weight of evidence that he would find it an honourable position to say that he would be prepared to consider accepting an amendment to extend the sunset clause. I sincerely hope so, as it is very hard to envisage what those 14 civil servants would have been doing otherwise. They might have been tackling, for example, the cleaning of our rivers and many other things.
We now come on to the issue raised by Clause 2. In the famous letter from the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, which I am sure was sent with positive intent, I am named because I asked a question about powers in the Bill. I literally cannot understand the reply in that paragraph, and I would be very grateful if we could have some sort of case study that exemplifies the way in which those powers will actually be used. I know that there are some excellent officials in the department working on this part of the Bill. Can we have a simple exemplar of how that would actually work?
That brings me to Clause 2. Again, all I am seeking at this stage is clarification and simplification of what we can get. When the Minister winds up, can he explain to the Committee the exact circumstances under which Clause 2 would come into effect? The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, has raised this issue, and I want to reinforce it. Can he tell the Committee what a specified instrument is likely to be? Does this mean a statutory instrument that has to be amended rather than kept intact or removed? Are there any other categories that might fall into the scope of this clause and, if so, what? We cannot take comfort from the idea that this exists and therefore we will be able to resolve many different problems that will suddenly find themselves being able to be passported into next year and beyond, and therefore we can stop worrying about it.
Finally, I put this question to the Minister at Second Reading: it is a really important question, but I did not get a satisfactory answer. Why is the power to modify the sunset clause not extended to Ministers in Wales and Scotland, particularly when a disproportionate burden of effort is falling on the ministries in those countries? They do not have the capacity and they need some help and some flexibility. I ask the Minister to think again, particularly about Wales, where the effective deadline will be the end of October: it will not even be December. They will be three months short of the deadline with the flexibility that we have. Can I have an answer to that specific question tonight?