Lord Fox (LD)

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this Report debate and to speak to this amendment. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, for reminding us that we are not relitigating the Brexit debate, because sometimes in Committee it was very hard to understand that point, given the speeches that came from his Benches. We are not relitigating the Brexit debate; we are trying to put in place a regulatory regime and the ability to deliver regulation that benefits the people of this country. I was minded to consider that if I was using an electric lawn-mower and I started either to be electrocuted by it or have my toes removed by it, the last thing I would worry about was whether the regulation for that was autonomous. I would be worrying: why was it not safe? Why was the product not preserving my rights as a consumer not to be electrocuted or amputated? There is a serious point to this. If the noble Lord wanted to put a purpose to the Bill, its purpose is not to deliver some mystical autonomy—if we look at Amendment 8, we see that the Minister, far from delivering autonomy, is going to tie us to a whole bunch of other regulatory regimes. It is about delivering a regime that protects people and the environment, and gives consumers right of recompense if they are sold faulty products—all those sorts of things that we see before us. If we look in the draft code of conduct, that is what is set out in the introduction to it. Sometimes we use before Clause 1 purpose amendments to make sure that we are the first speaker up. I do not think in this case that was in the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe. His amendment is designed—