My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher; I agree with everything she said. I also very much agree with the previous speakers, including my noble friend Lady Ludford.
I will make a point in response to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, when he questioned the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, on whether her amendments would delay the process and whether that would be a problem. The fundamental problem we have is set out very clearly by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in paragraph 35 of its 25th report, which quotes from the RDEUL memorandum:
“Overall, the change in status will make it possible to amend or repeal a greater amount of RDEUL using secondary legislation, which will enhance the ability for amending RDEUL more quickly without the need for primary legislation. This is a more proportionate status for RDEUL, as when made it was not subject to the same degree of UK Parliamentary scrutiny as an Act of Parliament or even domestic secondary legislation.”
However, the committee goes on to say that
“RDEUL has a special status because much of it is of considerable significance in policy terms.”
Once again, we have spent most of the last three Committee days discussing issues relating to policy and asking for clarification on when that will be nailed down and understood and when Parliament can look at it before final decisions about the Bill are made.
I return to the question I asked on the first day of Committee: at what point will the dashboard be frozen? After it is frozen, how long will it be before it comes into law? Will it be 31 July, October or 30 December? How do Ministers respond to the issue that Parliament will have to give up a significant role in key policy terms, which is normally part of primary legislation, and which would be moved into secondary legislation under this clause? At the moment, we still do not have an answer as to when Parliament will be able to look at the detail of the dashboard to make decisions on it.