My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 72 and 73, and I thank my noble friend Lord Trenchard for signing them. Clause 4 is a short clause dealing with emergencies. It allows for product regulations
“to be disapplied, or to apply with modifications, in cases of emergency”.
It also provides:
“The disapplication … may be made subject to conditions”.
That is it. I wonder what happened to the rest of the explanation that a clause of this type surely deserves. Perhaps the parliamentary drafter was using only headlines and forgot to fill in the blanks.
These amendments are designed to introduce some checks and balances. As the clause is currently written, there is no definition of what constitutes an emergency.
There is no definition in Clause 10, which deals with interpretation. Who defines an emergency? How long might an emergency last? How will emergency provisions be enforced? The committees that we have talked about so much have been very clear. We have discussed this many times. The Bill is skeletal in nature and introduces a number of Henry VIII powers. I am only surprised that this clause was not added to the list of clauses that they think should be removed from the Bill in its current form.
My Amendment 72 is merely an attempt to seek answers to some of those questions and to apply a minimal level of parliamentary scrutiny. I simply do not think it is right that an undefined individual or body could introduce undefined emergency powers of an unspecified duration without a basic level of scrutiny —frankly, that way despotism lies.
My Amendment 73 expands on this and would introduce an element of ongoing scrutiny. Again, I can see no reason why the Government would disagree with this because, in their response to the Delegated Powers Committee’s report, they said that
“the Department is committed to … engage with stakeholders … including in cases of emergency”.
I have included that exact form of words in my amendment, as well as requirements to justify the continuing need for these powers, to assess their impact and to introduce some time limits. I cannot see any reason at all why the Government would not accept this amendment, given that, in effect, they have already committed to doing pretty much what it says. I beg to move.