Lord Frost (Con)

My Lords, Amendment 56 stands in my name. As it is, I guess, the last time that I will speak on this Bill, perhaps I may use the opportunity to join others in saying thank you to the Ministers for the willingness they have shown to meet us and to show flexibility on parts of the Bill, even if that flexibility has possibly been more evident on its more marginal and peripheral aspects than on the core provisions, which matter so much to us. I thank them anyway for it. One of those core provisions, which we have debated at length, is of course Clause 2(7), which creates the power to align UK legislation with EU law. My Amendment 56 would ensure that the affirmative parliamentary procedure applied to such secondary legislation under that provision. This is important, as the procedure of legislating by cross-reference to the laws of another entity is certainly, to borrow terminology from another sphere, novel and contentious. Therefore, if it happens—I am sure it is going to happen and probably quite a lot, I fear—it really ought to do so only consciously and according to a procedure that gives both of this Parliament’s Houses the maximum powers to be aware that it is happening and to influence it to the maximum possible. Of course, that is what the affirmative procedure is about. I hope that, even at this late stage, the Ministers might look favourably on this amendment in the interests of respecting the rights and powers of this Parliament.