Member

Overall, your Lordships needs to understand what the statutory guidance will look like. We need to know how this Act will work and what it will mean in practice. In many respects, the Government are asking your Lordships to stand back and allow them to formulate the details of the Bill gradually, as more and more government amendments flood in and consultations still progress—with outcomes set well after the Government hope to finish the Bill. Some might say that they are making it up as they go along, but I will not. Either way, this is not the way to formulate important legislation such as this. We need to know what it actually is. The consultations should precede, not succeed, the drafting of a Bill. Government amendments should be few and trivial, not many and fundamental. The operational details of the proposed legislation should be clear and obvious, not opaque.