My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 141A in my name, which has cross-party support, for which I am most grateful. Noble Lords in all parts of the Committee have been fiercely critical of the cut-off date. However, even if the present draconian date is replaced with something a little saner, the task of assessing and taking decisions on so many instruments will be huge.
My amendment, like several others in this group, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, has remarked, is designed to give Parliament a say in that process. As many noble Lords on both sides of the issue acknowledge, some of these instruments will be of no great significance. But there will be many of much greater weight, whose survival, whether in their original or an amended form, will be of huge importance to our fellow citizens. There will of course be instruments, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, pointed out in his lapidary intervention on the first day of Committee, whose survival unamended will be almost a matter of course because we would not want to get rid of them—nobody would.
In this group, Amendments 43, 50, 62A and of course the amendment we are now specifically debating seek to give an active role to Parliament in an otherwise Executive-dominated process. My amendment goes a little further in providing for a substantial parliamentary assessment—including whether there has been adequate consultation—and for a process of suggested amendment, as part of what one might call this triaging activity. It does not deal with the unannounced repeal, which is a real problem. It could easily be adapted to do precisely that on Report, if that were acceptable. Of course, the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, does that.
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I have long felt that attempting to regulate proceedings in Parliament by the vehicle of statute ends in tears, and I am grateful to the Public Bill Office for keeping me on the straight and narrow in this case. But noble
Lords will see that the amendment bites only if the two Houses wish to set up a Joint Committee to undertake the sifting process, leaving that to exclusively parliamentary decision. The operational details are also left to Parliament. I happen to think that you would need a very big Joint Committee because, in the time available, whether it is longer or as expected now, you would need sub-committees to deal with subject areas or particular parts of the activity.
If the committee were set up, it would judge whether there had been a substantive change to preceding EU law and whether there has been sufficient public consultation upon the instrument containing the change. This triaging process has much to do with the recent recommendations of the Hansard Society in its report on delegated legislation—I declare that I am a member of its panel on delegated legislation.
I will mention one further feature of the amendment, which relates to the handling of amendments proposed to an instrument. I would expect such amendments to come from the Joint Committee, but there is absolutely no fundamental reason why they should. There are some points of contact with the legislative reform procedure, which is typically very lengthy. But I note that there are time limits in Amendment 50 that seek to address that problem.
It is important to recognise that this amendment does not provide for amendable SIs, as they are generally known. I have no wish to establish a category of quasi-Bills, subject to all the apparatus of reaching agreement between the two Houses. In Committee, I make no apology for now saying that the amendment is somewhat rough-hewn, and I hope that Ministers will address its policy aim, rather than focusing on any drafting issues. If the amendment returns on Report, whether or not elements of it might be combined with amendments tabled by other noble Lords, it will reflect the wisdom of noble Lords expressed in this debate.