 Welcome to the 33rd meeting of 2022 of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. We received apologies today from Jeremy Balfour MSP, and before we move to the first item on the agenda, I would like to remind everyone present to switch their mobile phones to silent. The first item of business is to decide whether to take items 5 and 6 in private. It is a committee content to take these items in private. Moving to agenda item number 2, we are taking evidence on the retained EU law revocation and reform bill. First of all, I welcome Sir Jonathan Jones, senior consultant at Linglators, LLP, and Dr Adam Tucker, who is a constitutional lawyer at the University of Liverpool, who is both joining us today virtually, and Morogros KC, member of the Faculty of Advocates, who is joining us in person. I welcome you all to the meeting today. First of all, I remind attendees to Morogros not to worry about turning on the microphone because that will happen automatically. If you would like to come in on a question, please raise your hand. In relation to Sir Jonathan and Dr Tucker online, please raise your hand or enter R in the BlueJeans chat function. I want to move to questions from the committee. First of all, I am going to open up today on what is in your view on the scope of the bill. What is your view of the scope of the powers to preserve rule? I am happy to start. I should say at the outset that I am here on behalf of the Faculty of Advocates. I am aware that at least one of my colleagues has already given evidence on this bill to the lead committee. What I say about delegated powers should be seen in the context of what has already been said and what has been submitted in writing to that committee. It is an unusual bill, of course, because it is all about delegated powers. Perhaps the committee has a slightly different role to the role that it would normally have, but you are already fully aware of that. To come to your question extremely broad, it is a bill that cannot really be compared with other primary legislation. There is not anything that is quite like that in that the whole purpose of that is to give government the power to introduce legislation that is extremely wide-ranging. The law modifies putting it very tamely, but across a whole range of areas and is going to have to do so if law is to be retained and is to escape the sunset provisions at some speed. Those are things that have obviously caused concern to the lead committee here and to many others elsewhere, but in a word, they are broad. I agree with what has just been said. It is an extraordinary bill. It is indeed unlike any other. On the specific question of the powers, the truth is that one cannot know what the effect of the bill will be and what the law will be by the end of 2023 without knowing how the powers will be exercised. The whole effect of the bill is dependent on the exercise of the powers, save only this, but if none of the powers are exercised, then virtually all retained EU law will fall away. That of itself is an extraordinary proposition that, in the absence of something positive happening, ministers deciding positively to retain or amend existing EU law, that whole body of law would drop away automatically. The combination of those things—as to say, the automatic expiry, the automatic sunsetting—coupled with this very wide set of powers to retain things, change things and replace things, produces a huge amount of uncertainty as to what the law will be because we simply do not know at the moment which of those powers will be exercised and in which ways and in relation to which bits have retained EU law. I start by agreeing with both of what Morag and Jonathan just said. Morag drew attention to the breadth of the powers and Jonathan drew attention to the incredible uncertainty that they introduced. I will add two things. One flows directly from what Jonathan just said. The nature of the cliff edge is that the powers are going to have to be exercised. Even though we are describing them as powers, there is almost going to be an obligation on Governments and Legislatures to exercise those powers. The creation of those powers with a cliff edge on the other side of them actually imposes quite a remarkable legislative burden, which is worth noting. The second thing that I will say is about where that legislative burden will fall. Now, because the bill allocates those powers to the UK Government, to the devolved Governments and to those Governments working in co-operation, part of the uncertainty is about how the division of Labour is going to unfold in the exercise of those powers. However, I would say that it is an absolute certainty that a significant amount of that burden will fall on the institutions of devolved Governments. That is all I would add to Morag's point about breadth and to Jonathan's point about uncertainty. I have already touched upon the bill. The bill sets the automatic date by which rule will be removed from the statute. Dr Tucker spoke about the cliff edge. What is your understanding of the number of pieces of legislation potentially affected? Do you have any further comment to make on that? The other committee has heard various figures banded about at 2,400, potentially another 1,400, then potentially others. We have also picked up a 5,000-figure measure at one point. Do you have any clarity or indication as to how many pieces of legislation will be included in that? Morag? I cannot add to the information that you already have. I do not work within Government, so I have no other access to that sort of information that you do not already have. I am already also aware of the figures that you have given. I would say that, in addition to that, and this picks up the point that was made by Dr Tucker a moment ago about where the burden falls, that the other difficulty is not just looking at the global figures but understanding where the devolved administrations, the devolved parliaments, will have competence to look at those and what proportion of them, whether it is 2,400 or 1,400 or 5,000 or however many it is, will fall within devolved competence. There is not a clear dividing line that allows a clear and absolute distinction between those, but to answer your primary question, I cannot assist with any further accurate clarification on the numbers. I would say that the reality is that the precise number is unknown because of the way the bill is structured. It picks out a category rather than specifying the number, but the precise number is unknown. I would also agree with the scale of the numbers that you just said. It is plainly in the thousands even if we cannot be more precise. I would also stress the significance of that number. The reality is that every single one of those has to be engaged with. That is why the number matters, but there is uncertainty. It is somewhere in the thousands and every single one has to be engaged with in some way for regulations to persist in whatever it covers. I am afraid that I have no more inside information either. I agree that all we have got is the figures that the Government gives. We also hear stories of new laws being discovered, which is unnerving. There is a question in any event as to what is a piece of the law and how those laws are counted. There is a whole set of regulations that count as one law or as many. I do not know the answer to that. That just underlines the point about uncertainty that I made before. The risk that Dr Tuck has set is that particular bits of legislation are missed and therefore not engaged with. If no conscious decision is made by that particular law simply because it has not been spotted and it has dropped off the list, the consequence will be that it falls away over the edge of the cliff by accident. That is one of the other risks, because we do not have a certain number or we do not know the precise universe of laws that is affected. There must be a risk that some will be missed altogether with that consequence. The next question is probably more for Dr Tucker with some of the comments that he has already indicated, but certainly if the other two witnesses would like to come in, please do so. Could you give us your reflections on the extent to which Parliament, as opposed to ministers, will be able to influence what the statute book will look like as a result of that bill? That is the topic that is one of my research interests, which is to do with the scrutiny of delegated legislation, which is, of course, a primary interest of this committee as well. The reality is that, under existing practice, Parliament—I will talk about the Westminster Parliament to start with, and you will be more familiar with me with how well these comments transfer to the Scottish context, but I think that there are similarities. The reality is that Parliament will have minimal influence over that question, that the nature and the practices of scrutiny of delegated legislation in the UK are such that, once the power is delegated, especially in the context that we are now, which is in anticipation, it is best to anticipate that Parliament will have minimal levels of impact over how that power is ultimately used. One thing that I always say in conversations like this and in my written work is that I always advocate changing that situation, but that is not realistic at the moment. One way that I often advocate changing it is by saying that there should be a move towards scrutiny of the merits of these instruments, because one thing—and this committee, you are familiar with this, it is in your terms of reference, I think—is that there is a distinction between technical and legal scrutiny and substantive on merit scrutiny. My advocacy for a shift towards merit scrutiny is always resisted for reasons that I understand, but it is worth stressing that, to the extent that Parliament will have an impact, the kind of scrutiny that Parliament will do under current practices will be limited to technical or legal scrutiny and not merit space scrutiny, which would be particularly significant when we are talking about the making alternative provisions power, which is a policy change power. Under current practices, the impact of Parliament will be minimal, as my answer is. Yes, that is probably an appropriate point to make a couple of observations about the extent of the ability of Parliament to scrutinise anticipated secondary legislation made following the bill if it is enacted. I think that there is a big picture question, as well as a technical question, if I can take the big picture question first, which is associated with the volume of anticipated legislation. Sir Jonathan is quite right to point out that, if it is not retained, it will fall, so there will be an obligation to retain if there is thought to be a danger that whole areas of life and work will be unregulated after the sunset provisions. If there is a need and obligation, a real premium placed on retaining things, the volume of work that is likely to be required will impose a burden not just on those who are responsible for the preliminary stages, identifying the law in question and doing the necessary drafting, but also on those in Parliament who are required to scrutinise it. That is the big picture question. That breaks down to distinguishing between where existing law is retained as is, if it is a simple measure that says that it is preserved and we do not want to make any modifications, then it can be anticipated that scrutiny of that might be acceptable for that to be relatively light touch, after all, as it was, and no changes needed. However, if ministers are seeking to modify, to update, to develop, to make changes as appropriate, that is exactly the sort of area that calls out for at least some measure of analysis. It is important to distinguish between just a simple retention and retention with a bit of updating or something more than that. If I can turn then, and forgive me if this is something that we are going to come to anyway, I do not want to take you out of the order of your questions, but you were asking about the extent of Parliament to influence legislation as opposed to ministers. One of the interesting features of the bill is that it distinguishes in terms of procedure between what would happen in Westminster and indeed in the Senate in terms of the powers in Wales, where there is proposed to be introduced in part 3, I think of schedule 3, to the ability to sift proposed legislation. That simply means that there is an opportunity for Parliament to see proposals in draft, so measures that are going to be introduced will have to be laid in draft. I believe that the time period is 10 sitting days. That gives Parliament in Westminster, and I understand it in the Senate as well, the opportunity to say that that should not be done by a negative procedure but by affirmative procedure. That is referred to as the sifting power. That does not exist in relation to measures that come before the Scottish Parliament. There is a memorandum from cabinet office to the Delegated Powers Committee in Westminster, which explains that the Scottish Government was content that that is not necessary. I have to confess that I have not dug into the reasons for that, and it is conceivable that the power exists elsewhere in the 2010 act. However, it seems to me that that is at least a distinction that ought to be of interest to the committee, and it may very well already be on your to-do list of things to look at. In answering your question about the extent of powers of Parliament, it probably is important to bear in mind that the powers of this Parliament, in that respect—fairly narrow but important respect—are different to those that exist elsewhere. It is anticipated, I should say, that Northern Ireland does not have those powers either. I think that that was for practical reasons that it was not possible to identify the need for them. However, I understand that it is anticipated that it would be possible to introduce those powers at a later stage in the bill. Only briefly, to stand back again, the unusual combination of the scope of the bill and therefore the range of a number of instruments that are slightly to be made under it. Inevitably, the capacity for parliamentary scrutiny will be limited. It will plainly be much less than would be the case if the Government would bring forward individual bills covering particular topics. The fact that all this is being done by secondary legislation inevitably means that scrutiny will be limited. Coupled with this fabulously quick timetable, assuming that we stick to the 2023 deadline, that can be extended, as we know, in relation to individual instruments. However, the existing deadline gives a year for all this to happen, and therefore it is just a fact of practical life that the capacity for Parliament—again, I am most familiar with the Westminster Parliament, but this must be true for the devolved Parliament. Does the capacity for members of Parliament to scrutinise the volume of legislation that we can expect within the space of the year must inevitably be very limited, almost whatever procedure is used? That is just to put it in that context. I want to come on to that particular point, but also to the points that were raised earlier. We know that, irrespective of what the figures are, we know that it is in the thousands in terms of the piece of legislation, and the issue of capacity regarding the Parliaments to scrutinise. However, is the capacity there with officials to engage with each of those bits of law before the decision is taken as to whether it should be extended or not? That is probably a question more for Sir Jonathan with your past. Yes, thank you. I was an official, of course, but I am not any more, so, again, I do not have first-hand inside knowledge. I think that this will be a huge challenge to the civil service. It might be said that they have had some time to prepare for this, since we left. Obviously, some work has been done to assess the range and the number of instruments or laws that are affected, but we have also noted that that may be an uncertain number, and it seems to be growing. Some preparatory work will no doubt have been done, and civil servants will do their best to go through the process that we have described, which is to analyse these instruments and make proposals to ministers as to what should be kept and what should change. However, in the scale of that, it will be hugely challenging. The comparison that I make is with the process that was gone through under the 2018 act itself. That is the statute that created the concept of retained EU law and conferred powers on ministers—again, quite wide powers, but they were powers to make relatively technical changes to retain the EU law, to cure deficiencies in the language of that act in order that the law worked after we had left. That was a big enough exercise, but I was in the civil service for at least part of that time. I engaged every corner of Whitehall and certainly large parts of my department, the Government legal department, in working through that body retained EU law, working out what technical changes—and they were mainly technical changes—were necessary to make the laws work. Many thousands of statutory instruments were produced to do just that. That took about two years, and it was a much more technical exercise, difficult though it was. It was a much more technical exercise than what is being proposed now, where we have the potential of wide-ranging fundamental policy change to the very content of EU law—that is the whole point of this exercise—and a much shorter time scale—well, a time scale of about half as long. The comparison that I make is with that earlier exercise. That is going to be shorter and much more difficult. It is not just an issue for the civil service. It is not just about technical capacity to list the instruments and draft the legislation. The challenge is to politicians, to ministers and parliamentarians to do a proper job, to analyse the policy options and decide which laws should be changed and which not. Ideally, to consult with affected sectors, the bill contains no obligation to consult, and I do not know whether they will be meaningful consultation. For all of those reasons, I think that the system is going to be massively challenged, not just the technical civil service bit of it but the whole political system, because of the combination of the scale of the bill and the very tight time scale. You take me on to the next area. You have just touched upon it there regarding consulting. The issue of consulting and consent with the Scottish ministers and the Scottish Parliament is something that has come up in the lead committee, but it has come up in a regular area of concern and frustration over quite some time between Scotland and the UK Parliament. The particular bill allows that the UK ministers could use the powers to preserve the rule in devolved areas without the consent and consulting with the Scottish ministers and the Scottish Parliament. In terms of the witnesses, do you have any comments about what that will mean in terms of dialogue and respecting the devolution? Dr Tucker? The constitutional version of that is that the dual convention does not apply to delegated legislation, and what this bill does is that it takes substantial policy areas that would otherwise need to be dealt with in primary legislation and therefore come under the protection of dual, and it affects a wholesale delegation of those policy areas into delegated legislation where the protection of the dual convention doesn't apply. That does mean that there is a serious risk that the integrity of the devolution settlements will become under pressure. Of course, it depends on practice under the act, which is yet another of the issues that there is radical uncertainty about, but there is definitely a risk that, because that removes a range of policy areas in their entirety from the protection of the dual convention, there will be an increase in the imposition of legislation on the devolved nations from the centre. However, there is a lot of uncertainty about that. Mr Jonathan? Very little to add other than the point that I keep coming back to about the time constraints, which, even with a will, are going to prevent deep meaningful consultation across the whole wide range of affected policy areas. I was earlier referring—we may come back to this, I don't know—to the wider question of consultation, not just with devolved parliaments or administrations but with business, with affected sectors and with society. The bill contains no provision for that. Again, I don't know whether there will be scope for some of that to happen at Hock, I hope so, but, again, time is so limited. With the points just made, there are probably two categories of concern. One is the simply pragmatic. That's not to downplay it. The points that have already been made, with some force by Sir Jonathan, just about the volume of work that is required, no matter where that falls, and I have already referred to the difficulties that may arise in understanding piece by piece instrument by instrument what is within devolved competence. Just having to carry out that exercise, even if everybody agreed that it should all happen, that's going to be challenging. That's probably the primary challenge, but you're asking about challenges to do with absence of consultation or difficulties with consultation. Again, the primary issue is when are you going to have time to do that? I agree with the point that I've already made that it's not just about politicians talking to each other or Governments talking to each other, it's also understanding what interests there are out there in the world as to whether a particular set of regulations should be retained as they are or should be modified. On one view, taking a very pure view, it is a system that, given time, can be made to work. Questions about tension or about disagreements as to policy choices are essentially political issues. Those around this table will be well familiar with the challenges that those present. From a legal perspective, one of the consequences that may arise where there are divergent approaches on issues of policy in areas that do fall within devolved competence, if the ministers choose to take forward proposals or bring to the Parliament legislation that will retain certain regulations, while those are allowed to fall in England. There are diverging means of regulating important areas that affect trade business operations, but it's not too difficult to see that bumping into internal markets problems if those are likely to lead to unequal treatment in terms of regulation. My final question at the moment is just regarding the negative procedure that's been touched upon already. Regulations to preserve rule are subject to the negative procedure. Now, whether that's been made by the UK Parliament or the Scottish Parliament, do you think that the negative procedure is actually appropriate for regulations that preserve rule? Well, it depends. It's quite challenging to look at really important areas of regulation that have been carefully thought through historically, perhaps decades ago, or perhaps recently, at a European level, and then have been implemented whether in the United Kingdom or in Scotland, as a whole, or specifically in Scotland, with a great deal of care, to look at the modification of those done at speed and say, yes, negative procedure will be just fine. That seems to be a little difficult for some things, where they can be put into the category of very purely technical, then one could look at things in a different way. It's probably more a matter for this committee than a strictly legal question, but I don't want to repeat the point that was made earlier. I think that the bill does recognise that there perhaps ought to be scope for building in some protection, and I've referred already to the sifting provisions. I'm not suggesting that that just cures all problems. I think that there would be those who would look at it and say, well, that's hardly good enough. It's just a brief opportunity to shift it into affirmative procedure. It might be thought that at least having that protection brings some advantage, but I think that, combined with the time pressures, it's really hard to see that as being something that allows good quality scrutiny. I think that if your question is if a regulation was purely retaining an existing piece of retaining your law without changing it, would the negative procedure be acceptable? I think that formally the answer to that is yes, but if the intention is not to change the law at all, but to keep it as it is, then that relatively light touch or very light touch form of scrutiny might be sufficient. I think that we'll get into more difficulties where what's being proposed is a substantive change, but I think that you have to look at the bill in the round. The problem with it is all the ones that we've talked about so far. The combination of the powers with the cliff edge, so that if the powers aren't exercised, a piece of legislation will fall away automatically, just sort of rings along bells more generally. What one hope is that lots of regulations retaining the existing law—it may just be that the volume of those is a problem in itself, but, from the technical point of view, if you're asking is negative enough, if no change is being made, then probably the answer to that is yes, whether that works in the context of the whole bill and the volume of legislation that might be forthcoming, I think is still potentially a problem. Thank you, and Dr Tucker. Dr Tucker, my views on that are very similar to Sir Jonathan's. In general, I tend to be critical of the negative procedure in a lot of context, so that's the context of my answer. I understood your question as being about regulations under this bill that should be intended to revive the status quo. Even, in principle, the answer to that is that, yes, the negative procedure would be appropriate, but, especially in context, when we think of the sheer volume of work that's going to be done, the answer is that the negative procedure is probably, unavoidably, the only scrutiny process that will work for regulations that revive the status quo under this bill. I understood the question. For pure retention as is, no change. I completely agree. I was thinking of the more of the modifying amending updating sorts of changes. Thank you very much for that. I think that there's a wide range of areas that are covering extremely well, because obviously much of this is uncertain or even unknown at the moment, as was said earlier. However, if you don't mind a couple of quick questions on the sunset date, a year's time from now. The power to extend the sunset date is granted only to UK ministers. We've got a quote here from the Scottish Constitution Secretary, Angus Robertson, who says that the Scottish Government has already requested that the extension power be conferred on devolved ministers, as we do not consider it appropriate, that only UK ministers have the power to extend the sunset for devolved rule. There's a bit of debate there, obviously. Where UK ministers wish to extend the sunset date, including in devolved areas, there is neither consent nor consultation required at this point. That is obviously contentious. Does anyone have any points in particular on the sunset date that they want to bring forward? Clearly, it is contentious for political reasons. I think that there's one legal point that would arise if you had different powers to extend the sunset provisions. If those were to be exercised at a high level, which is to say all regulations that fall within devolved competence in respect of all those, we're going to extend the sunset provisions. It leaves open the question of interpretation for what exactly is covered by those. If you are able, as Westminster can do, to say that this is the sunset provision for absolutely everything, albeit that there might be things that get lost because they haven't been identified, that's one thing. However, if you're saying that, as a bloc, we're going to extend the sunset provision, you may be putting the burden of construing that on other people down the line. It may just increase the uncertainty. I'm mentioning that as anticipating a possible outcome of choosing to regulate in that way. I don't really have anything to add on the specific political debate. I think that the idea of the sunset generally is a pretty appalling way to legislate, setting an artificial timescale that is so tight with the risk that we've described of either overloading the system or of those just being missed and therefore falling away by accident, is a very poor way to legislate. If I could make one change to this bill, it would be to remove the sunset. Anyway, that's the more general point. Thank you very much indeed for that. Dr Tucker, please. No, I don't have anything to add to what the other two witnesses just said because I agree with them. That's very useful. Thank you very much. I don't want to labour the point too much actually if there is a broad debate, but should the UK ministers wish to extend the sunset beyond the present date? They would need to specify individual pieces or categories of legislation to which the extension was to apply because, assuming that they would not just do carte blanche in terms of an extension, would that mean that there are potentially different sunset dates for different legislation, which would be very complicated? I should imagine is anyone more aggros you got a point on that at all? Potentially it gives rise to the same sort of uncertainty, the complication that you're referring to would arise in a slightly different way, but that might be the result is that you can, if you're going to distinguish between different blocks, different categories, trying to do that in advance in a way that gives people who need to know the clarity that they need is really challenging. I agree with your analysis that the power to extend can only be exercised in relation to individual identified pieces of legislation, so there isn't the option of just saying that the whole sunset date is postponed. It has to be done individually and therefore that definitely creates the risk that you could have different dates for different bits of legislation or different sectors. I have a mild disagreement with Sir Jonathan, but the thrust of my answer is going to be the same. The legislation that has drafted plainly creates a situation where there may be multiple sunset dates for different legislation. I would also suspect or speculate that that is a likely outcome rather than a mere possibility because of the way that the extension power is structured. The sunset is too short, so a sensible prediction would be that the extension power will be exercised in some fashion. As soon as it is exercised, that will create a situation where there are different sunset dates for different regulations, unless some way can be found to use the extension power to cover everything. The power does allow specific legislation or a specified description of legislation, so it could be possible to use that power to describe all retained or assimilated by that point EU law. However, the underlying problem is that it is clearly structured so that it allows different sunset dates. I think that that is a reasonably likely outcome because the initial sunset date is just so short that it must be extended in some fashion. That opens up new areas of debate, no doubt going forward, but that is very useful at the moment. I think that we have touched on it already in relation to the appropriateness of the negative procedure and I will come back to that in a second. I was interested when it comes to reinstating rule or assimilating law, the power to use different words or concepts, but that does not go as far as making substantive changes to the policy effect of legislation. To understand more, I think that you mentioned substantive change in one of your answers, but what the threshold for substantive change is and where you think that it is. It is almost impossible to answer that in the abstract. It is not unknown to find that one word of difference in a section of an act makes a very substantive difference. Similarly, you can use an awful lot of words to say more or less exactly the same thing in different contexts, different legislative contexts. Clearly, there is a spectrum of modification. I cannot provide concrete examples, but one can conceive of something that is totally uncontroversial updating, and that might be something that falls easily within the scope of something easy to accept and uncontroversial minor. The bill anticipates not just the updating, the modest type of change but also allows ministers power to modify in a more substantive way. I think that there are also references allowing ministers to take account of technological and scientific developments in a particular context. That clearly anticipates that there will be substantive change of some kind, and that then leads to questions about the level of scrutiny that is demanded of those sorts of changes. I think that the short point is that it is not possible in advance to say that this category of changes is okay, that this is not because it really does turn on what people are trying to do at a particular time and what words they are using. If there is a disagreement on whether the change is substantive or not, what does that mean for the parliamentary process? It presents a challenge. I appreciate that that is not necessarily a very helpful way to look at it for you. Perhaps the concern, though, from out there in the world is that if there is disagreement or it is unclear as to what legislation means, whether changes, if substantive changes are made, but which have not received adequate scrutiny and are untested, if those changes cause uncertainty because people are unclear about the extent to which regulations apply to them, those are likely to be the more lasting consequences. If those changes were subject to the negative procedure, you would think that that was too low a bar. I agree. The points that were made earlier by Sir Jonathan in distinguishing between the just preserving, as is retention of things as they are, and that negative procedure is likely to be fine. I appreciate what you are asking me, whether, if it is just a minor change, is negative procedure okay? Yes, step up by step, but it does not take too long before what some people might say is a minor change. Others might say that perhaps for reasons that are not anticipated, that introducing a new condition to a set of regulations might the view might be taken that that is relatively minor, but others would disagree. It is quite difficult, especially against the background of time pressure to say, well, wait a minute, that should be taken out, given more extensive scrutiny, should be made subject to the affirmative procedure or whatever. I do not know if the other two witnesses had any further comment on that sort of point. I draw again the analogy with the exercise that was done under the 2018 act to cure deficiencies in EU law. I described that as being a relatively technical exercise, so not making big policy changes but just ensuring that the law worked. In truth, some of those are more substantial than others, and therefore there was the sifting process for deciding what level of scrutiny those instruments should have. It is really rather underlying the point that is just made. Even relatively technical changes can involve policy choices, so updating or technical adjustments, you have to make choices about, for example, how laws are going to be enforced, who enforces them, that kind of thing, or that can be important. Even something that, once it may look like a relatively minor piece of updating, can be significant. That is before you get into the more substantial powers, for example, in clause 15, positively to make new law. I agree that it is very difficult to stay in the abstract without seeing exactly what changes are proposed. I also wanted to ask whether the power to reinstate can be used to consolidate rule or assimilate law into a single instrument. What are the implications of that? Is that something that you have got views on? Again, that is open to all three witnesses. No, I do not have a view on that because it is not an important question, but because of the uncertainty that swirls and the background of extremely high workload that these things will be done under. I do not have a view to put forward on the significance of that possibility. Is it anyone else or no one has a view? I am happy to move on. The final question that I wanted to ask was about regulations that reinstate rule or assimilate law, and they are subject to the negative procedure except for the amend primary legislation, in which case the draft affirmative is to be used. What is your view on the appropriateness of that procedure? Obviously, it is slightly different from some other parts of the bill. I am not sure that I have got anything to add to what you have already said about the distinction between straightforward retention and innovation. I do not have either of the other two witnesses. Johnathan or Dr Tucker? I think that it is the same problem that is in the abstract working out what is a minor change. In principle, regulations that amend primary legislation, you might expect that they should get great scrutiny, and the bill recognises that. Beyond that, I think that it is very difficult to go beyond what we have said. Thank you, convener, and thanks to our panel for their helpful contributions this morning so far. I want to turn to the powers in clause 15 in relation to allowing UK ministers and devolved ministers to revoke retained EU law up until the end of 2023 or a simulated law from 1 January 2024 and to replace it. That power has been available to ministers until 23 June 2026. Where that provision is made to replace retained or a simulated law, the replacement provision can implement different policy objectives. I was keen to get your collective views on the scope of that power to revoke and replace retained EU law and the simulated law. Mori Bross, if you want to start, perhaps. I think that that takes the committee deep into policy territory. There is a limit to what I can say about the political aspects of that. Clearly, it is in this part in clause 15 that one finds some of the most challenging provisions in the bill so far as the extent to which ministers are enabled to innovate to introduce policy changes of quite a substantial kind using the powers that they could only normally exercise by introducing primary legislation and for that to be tested in the normal way. That really is where you find the heart of the very broad powers to replace, to develop, to bring in new law. There is a great deal more that can be said about clause 15, but I would probably best to hand over to the other witnesses. I think that section 15 is extremely constitutionally problematic, because what it involves is a massive transfer of legislative power to the executive, which is always problematic in a sense because that downgrades the scrutiny that power receives, but that massive transfer is happening and exacerbates it in circumstances where the scrutiny will be even less intense than normal because of the sheer volume of scrutiny that needs to be done. There is one reason that section 15 is constitutionally problematic, because it transfers legislative power to the executive at the same time as setting up a context where that will not be scrutinised even as well as normal. The second way that is problematic is the devolution context that I mentioned earlier, which is that the one ramification of that transfer is to remove those policy areas from the protection of the seal convention, which means that in devolved matters those powers can be exercised without any consent from the devolved administrations. Those are the two reasons that I find section 15 extremely problematic. Thank you very much, Dr Tucker. I think that that is really helpful in terms of trying to understand the broader concerns politically. Jonathan, do you have any further comments to make in relation to the broad scope of this section? Only yet again to underline the fact. Those are broad powers and this is the heart of the power in the bill to make new law or new policy, as has been said. Just to reflect yet again that this covers, this is not limited by reference to particular areas of policy as a bill normally would be. Even a bill with wide powers, it would normally have some kind of policy context, policy constraint. The only constraint here is that we are talking about retained EU law but we all know that that covers a vast range of topics, range of legal and policy areas. That is another feature that is unusual about this power, is the sheer breadth of policy and legal areas that it covers. The Government, as far as I am aware, has given very little indication of what it intends to do with those powers. I do not think that the explanatory notes to the bill give examples of the kinds of laws or policy areas that it wishes to amend or adapt using those powers and I have not seen anything else that does that. Again, those are broad powers in themselves but the range of areas that they cover is, I think, unprecedentedly broad. Then you get into all the other issues that Dr Tuck and others have talked about, which are the timescale and therefore the lack of scrutiny in the way that the size of the powers will be scrutinised. Thank you very much for that. In terms of just verifying your position, would you regard that using secondary legislation for this purpose of revocation and replacement being completely inappropriate and that it should be primary legislation as an emphasis or at least as a general presumption rather than the emphasis being on secondary provision just based on that need for scrutiny? Sorry, I do not want to cut across. Again, it comes back to the spectrum and Sir Jonathan is quite right to emphasise that, within the spectrum—mixing a couple of metaphors here—at one end of the spectrum, the uncertainty, the unknown nature of what is involved is what presents the problem. It is the breadth combined with the unlimited nature, albeit in the context of retained EU law. At one end of the spectrum, at the modest level of replacement of making minor changes, it would be legitimate to say that this is clearly something that is appropriate for secondary legislation. If it is something that would ordinarily require proper consultation, proper consideration and opportunities for scrutiny at primary legislation level, then it seems quite extraordinary that that should happen, even if it happens once, at a level where it is not receiving the same sort of scrutiny that it would if it were properly the subject of primary legislation. One sees that problem in bits and pieces in some other acts. You find surprisingly broad powers, but they are normally confined to the subject matter of a particular bill or a particular act, and concerns are expressed about Henry VIII powers in a limited context. That is those sorts of powers and then some in this unconfined way, and it is the uncertainty at this stage of knowing what that looks like. That is the problem. It seems like the power of determining that is entirely with the executive and that therein lies the risk of democratic overreach. I want to emphasise the UK Government's position in terms of the Cabinet Office paper, in which it says that the powers are required because there are approximately 2,000 pieces of secondary retained EU law, including retained direct EU law, and that the Government may wish to replace legislation more suit to the UK's needs and to do so through purely sector-specific primary legislation would take a significant amount of parliamentary time, so there is justification as there is enough capacity within the Parliament to handle that. I assume that you might agree that that is an overly generalised position and that there is probably more capacity to be a bit more nuanced with it all. Would you agree, Sir Jonathan? I would. That is prioritising speed. As against the quality of legislation, something that needs to be done quickly and therefore needs to be done in this way is a judgment that the Government has made that I personally would not agree with. I mean what you would normally expect is that the Government, who wants to reform the law in any of these areas, which of course is entitled to do, would bring forward a bill on employment law or a bill on product safety or environmental protection. You would have individual bills that would set out some policy parameters which Parliament could debate. It might have powers within it, of course, but it would have powers set in the context of a particular policy direction that Parliament would have the opportunity to consider. That, of course, would take some time. As we have said, it might involve some consultation with the relevant sectors and so on, and all of that takes time. I would say that good legislation does take time, and what the Government has done with this bill is prioritise speed, but do it all in one big lump, do it within a year. Inevitably, yet again repeating it myself, that limits the opportunity for consultation or scrutiny, and it means that the powers that are within the bill are inevitably very wide and are not constrained in the ways that they would be in a normal bill that sets out a policy framework and all sorts of limitations and constraints on the powers that this bill does not contain. Can I just bring in the response from the Cabinet Office on this about the general powers, because it says that retained EU law substance review has identified a distinct lack of subordinate legislation making powers to remove retained EU law from the UK statutory book where appropriate, and if required, replace that provision with legislation that is more fit for purpose for the UK, because it says that had the UK never been a member of the EU, many of the areas identified by the substance review would likely have already had similar powers comparable to non-EU policy areas to amend, so the lack of powers therefore being an oddity created by our EU membership, and that seems to be saying that the actual extraordinary situation that retained EU law actually does not provide the same provisions in secondary legislation. Would you agree with that assessment, Sir Jonathan, or perhaps Dr Tucker? Well, let me come in quickly as I make—well, you have to take the law as you find it. Government and Parliament are entitled to change the law, and the way of doing that, I think, would be to bring forward specific policy-focused bills. Those bills could contain the powers that the Government is now talking about, but the scope of those powers would be constrained by the overall policy, as I have said, and they would be debated by Parliament. They might have all sorts of other limits on what they could be used for. If the Government wanted to create that kind of power, it could do so, but I think that what is objectionable about this bill is that it is seeking to do so all in one go at every area, here the two covered by EU law, and again within the absurdly timescales that we have been talking about. The Government wants powers, it should create powers, but it should do so in a thoughtful way policy area by policy area. I was just to add a supplementary question before you came in. Feel free to address all this, Dr Tucker, but it was just also about if ministers were to choose not to bring forward replacement legislation, would there be any opportunity at all for Parliament to scrutinise that decision, but please do feel to give a general comment in relation to the discussion so far. The reason I asked the comment was to just mention another justification that the Government has put forward for this power, so I agree with everything Sir Jonathan said about the time and capacity justification. The other justification that I have seen offered is the argument that because these matters were dealt with in secondary legislation then, that makes it appropriate to deal with them through secondary legislation now. That justification has been run alongside the time and capacity one. I do not think that that second justification is true either. The appropriate way to tackle these matters depends on the substance of what is being tackled and how it is being tackled, not on how it has been done in the past. That possibility is wiped out by the wholesale nature of the bill. That is what I wanted to comment on. Just because those things are in secondary legislation now does not entail that that is the appropriate way to deal with them in future. I agree with what has been said. The Cabinet Office justification that you have referred to that at least starts with the question had the UK never been a member of the EU. That is really Dr Tucker's point that because it has been done in secondary legislation before now implementing EU law that it should be done in a particular way hereafter, I agree with Sir Jonathan that it does not matter how we got to where we are. We are looking at law from this point now, and we should be looking at the best way of ensuring that that law from this point onwards works. In order to do that, Parliament and the Executive have to respect each other's powers and strengths, and it is important to scrutinise it in a proper way. I just wanted to probe again on my question about if the Government were to not bring for replacement legislation that there would be, as I can see it, no capacity for the Parliament to influence that whatsoever or have any form of scrutiny about the revocation of legislation. There might be a difference if they were to bring in replacement legislation about mechanism perhaps, but if they were just to simply revoke through secondary measures, there was no means to scrutinise whatsoever the impacts. Dr Tucker, have you got a view, Sir Jonathan? The effect of the sunset clause is that if ministers do nothing, including if they consciously decide to do nothing, then a given piece of EU law will fall away. Yes, it is right. None of the Parliaments will have any opportunity to influence that decision once this bill is passed, because the sunset will be the sunset. Ministers then either by accidentally doing nothing or, as I was saying, by deliberately deciding that we are happy for this particular piece of legislation to expire, then Parliament will have no opportunity to scrutinise that at all. That will be the automatic effect of the bill. That is quite an alarming sort of realisation that potentially could have wholesale destruction of legislation in that way, but without any capacity for Parliament. I think that just making it as stark as that was quite a powerful comment. I think also just looking at the issue around ministers will not be able to use the revocation replacement powers to increase regulatory burdens. The Hansard Society has stated in that regard that, just with a few caveats, I do anything that we want power from ministers and that clause 15 brackets 5 of the bill imposes what amounts to regulatory sealing. That might be contrary to previous claims from UK ministers. In some areas that have retained EU law might be amended to enhance regulatory requirements, for example, in the field of animal welfare. In your view, Sir Jonathan, will the preclude ministers from improving standards, rights and protections that are currently enshrined and retained EU law? I am sorry to say that it is very difficult to answer in the abstract, because the overall effect of the power is subject to some constraints, including the constraint about not increasing regulatory burdens. Without having the text just at hand, there is an assessment of what the overall effect power is. Within that, there could be changes to one aspect of a provision that is tightened up and, at the same time, other aspects might be loosened and the minister might conclude that the overall effect is not to increase regulatory burdens. It is quite a subtle provision in that way. Again, without looking at a specific example, it is difficult to say whether it would be within the overall power or not. The overall intention is, I suppose, intended to be reassuring that it is not intended to increase regulatory burdens, but one person's regulatory burden is another person's protection. If, by that, it is meant that we cannot increase protections, then that is a political constraint on the power, but what that adds up to in practice is difficult to predict until you see a particular use of the power. I appreciate that. Thank you, Sir Jonathan. Dr Tucker, have you got a view on the ratcheting effect that it can only move in one direction in terms of using the secondary powers for enhancements that are not available? I think that that limit on the power gives it a clear deregulatory bias. That is our starting point, that this is a power that does not have many limits on it. One of the explicit limits on it is that it is a deregulatory power rather than an increasing regulatory power. Like Sir Jonathan said, what counts as increasing a regulatory burden is that it is hard to understand, especially in the abstract. There are two issues, neither of which I can say anything on other than drawing attention to them. The first one is that your question was about the conformity of that subsection, that sub-close, with previous Government promises, was it not? It probably does contradict previous promises to use that mechanism for increasing regulatory protections in some circumstances. However, it is also an issue outside previous promises about how this power will be used, because it sets the boundaries for how it can be used, even if that has not been promised in the past. It goes beyond the fact that it is a breach of the previous representation of what the bill would look like. I am not sure that I have a particular additional point to make. If you were expecting to see very significant thoroughgoing regulatory change, you would expect that to be brought forward in primary legislation anyway. I think that the limits that are placed around increasing burdens are quite difficult to offer meaningful analysis of that without seeing what it actually looks like in substance. I think that that is fair enough. I am going to bring Bill in and I know that Bill has a question about clause 16. Just to take that on just very slightly further, clause 16 was described by the Hansard society as the power to update being very open-ended. They were questioning whether a change in technologies or development scientific understanding has occurred, for example with respect to artificial intelligence, genetically modified organisms or net zero, whether that power should be within the scope of ministers to update rule in those areas and assimilated law to take account of changes in technology or developments in scientific understanding. Obviously, these days, we see large movements in. Would you think that it is reasonable for ministers to be left with that ministerial discretion in these instances, please? Again, I think that this is possibly just an example of really quite broad drafting that could cover at the entirely mundane level, something relatively straightforward. The sorts of examples that you have mentioned, it is possible to think of those as introducing something rather more significant. There is a breadth built into this. All will depend on how that is exercised. I am sorry that that is probably an unilluminating answer to your question, but again, what we see here is a broad scope that shows us the detail, and then we can understand what that actually looks like. Thank you very much. Do you want to add anything to that at all? No, it is the same point. It is just a very broad power spanning a huge range of existing law and no certainty about how it will be exercised. It could be for minor things, but it could be for much bigger ones. Thank you for that. Dr Tucker, do you have anything? No, nothing to add, but the reason I have nothing to add is because of the uncertainty. Thank you very much indeed to everyone for making a brief attempt at that one. Thank you. Paul, you had another question. They come back on the point on clause 8 around legislative hierarchy relating to the removal of the principle of supremacy of EU law, while clause 4 of the bill reverses the principle that retained EU law takes precedence over incompatible domestic law. The power in clause 8 enables ministers to specify that the reversal of the principle does not apply to specific places of domestic law and retained EU law, and therefore, retained EU law continues to take precedence. That allows ministers to retain the existing hierarchy where that is desirable to avoid unintended consequences or to ensure continuity. I just wanted to ask if the power in clause 8 is exercisable by both Scottish ministers and UK ministers in areas of devolved competence. UK ministers are therefore given power to set the interpretative hierarchy that applies to legislation in devolved areas. Bear in mind that the devolution settlement was never designed with the presumption that would end up outside of the EU, so it has caused that disruption. Do you have any comments to offer on that? I doubt that UK government will be enthusiastic about using this power, even though they have given it themselves. In fact, the background to a lot of the bill is that the bill undoes some of the things that were done in previous legislation, in the UWA in particular. I think that this is a clause that is intended to be a safety net where there is interaction between different enactments, domestic enactments and enactments made under this bill. On the one hand, it is eye-capturing because it is about supremacy and changing hierarchies, but on the other hand, the effect of using or exercising the power under this clause would only be to maintain the status quo before this bill was enacted. Because the EUWA maintains the supremacy principle, this is a clause that is designed to let ministers maintain that status quo rather than have the reversal that would happen as the default position under the new bill. It is eye-capturing, but it is about the status quo. That is helpful. Thank you very much, Dr Tucker. Jonathan, do you have anything for those ads? Well, I feel I'm becoming very repetitive, but again, the real problem with this combination of provisions is the uncertainty that they create, because the abolition of supremacy is being done in the abstract. You have an existing set of rules about interpretation, which were preserved by the EUWithdrawal Act, because the whole aim of that act, as far as possible, was to secure continuity and certainty in the law. You don't arbitrarily change how the law is going to be interpreted. You keep the same rules, including the rule of supremacy, which is politically anathema to some, including the Government. They changed the rule to take away the doctrine of supremacy, but, again, without any real indication of what that might mean in practice, a particular area of the law. That creates uncertainty, because you change the way the law is to be interpreted deliberately. It's open to people to argue that settled interpretations from the past should now be changed, previous court decisions should be reopened and so on. We have no idea what will happen as a result of any of that. That's the big uncertainty point. The Government takes power in the bill and says, in case we don't like the results of that provision, we will reverse it to restore the pre-existing provision. That's okay, but we have no idea yet again whether the Government will, in fact, do that. The Government may be very loath to do that, because the headline is to get rid of the doctrine of supremacy. The end result is that we simply don't know what the effect will be in any particular areas of law. It may take litigation—it may be the interests of certainly big corporate entities—to seek to relitigate some of these issues. It may take litigation to work out whether, and if so, how the law has changed as a result of the reverse of the hierarchy. On top of that, we have got this question of whether the Government will exercise this power to restore the stages quo, but we just don't know. I don't have anything to add. The critical thing is that this is unclear. It opens up possibilities of how that will be implemented. I think that we just don't know. Okay. That's certainly helpful. It's more questions than answers, I suppose. It begs, but I guess that's just a sign of the constitutional immaturity of a lot of this and how the Government is proceeding. Thank you very much. Thank you, Paul. I just come back to Sir Jonathan, that you mentioned the word litigation. Paul's question was in clause 8, but just as a whole with the bill. The word uncertainty has been used quite a lot this morning from witnesses in terms of what may or may not have been going forward. On the issue of litigation, is that something that the witnesses would expect to take place because of that lack of clarity by way of the number of regulations and the numbers of pieces of legislation that will actually be covered by this bill, because of where it's the 2,400 plus the 1,400 or 5,000 or whatever. I dare say that there will be some organisations at some point in the future that will operate and take decisions based upon what they think is the law, but potentially will actually have been covered by what may happen with this law and potentially, if there's been a sunsetting, then the initial law might not actually exist anymore because it's obviously fallen off the statute book. Do you expect an increase in litigation to actually happen overall as a consequence of this piece of legislation from a UK government? Morog? I think that there are at least two different categories of situation that might arise, I think, taking from your question. The first category would be the circumstances where a group of people who had understood that they were being subject to a particular set of regulation now no longer are, and that's to their disadvantage, and that's happened perhaps by accident, perhaps things have run out of time, perhaps something has fallen off the cliff edge that ought to have been caught and it's tumbling down, and that's causing a problem. I can't rule out that somebody would want to raise proceedings following that, but it would seem to me that if there's a general acceptance that something has been missed that ought not to have been, and it's in the accidental category almost, then the way to deal with that is potentially by emergency legislation in order to plug a gap if that arises. It would be hard to see what taking that through the courts would add. You might be looking again for some emergency measure such as a declarator if it were being raised in the courts here conceivably, but instinctively that seems rather unlikely. The more difficult to call is the different set of circumstances where there is a point of view taken by people whose interests are adversely affected by a change in a regulatory position, for example, who disagree with what's being done, who disagree with the way in which it's being done and perceive that their interests have been unlawfully affected. Again, it's really difficult to say in the abstract what that might look like, where they might raise proceedings on what grounds it can't be ruled out, but I think that it's probably important to distinguish between those two categories and, no doubt, there are other categories as well. Before I bring in the other panellists, just on the point regarding your first category, certainly to bring in emergency legislation, it could be quite tame consuming as well to pull something together. On the issue of capacity that was raised earlier, on the question to Sir Jonathan, does the civil service have the capacity to look at all the legislation that's currently there? I think that Dr Tucker had indicated that certainly the officials would have to engage with all the legislation that's there. Now, with the short time that we have, there is a possibility that not every piece of legislation will be engaged with to take an active decision on before a sunsetting does or doesn't happen on that particular piece of legislation. I suggest that, with the capacity issue with the short timescale that's there, notwithstanding the potential to extend for sunsetting. The issue of litigation could potentially be a regular occurrence if businesses or trade sectors end up being caught in something that wasn't fully considered beforehand. If it's a choice between uncontroversial emergency legislation, which might be as simple as saying, we meant to retain this in its entirety, we didn't want to modify it or amend it in any way, we just wanted to preserve it and it got missed, that's likely to be something that could be done pretty swiftly, especially if it's uncontroversial. That is likely to be the more efficient way of solving that particular problem, again, quite difficult in the abstract. Repeated litigation carries its own uncertainties. Nobody goes to court or very, very few people go to court on advice that they are bound to succeed. It's not something that even big corporations embark on lightly and in areas of policy uncertainty, where there are likely to be political pressures as well, it's a fairly significant undertaking. All that I can say at this stage is that it might be something that people with interests in those areas will be contemplating. Will there be a slew of cases? Don't know, but uncertainty is often something that puts people off taking that route, too. I think that there is a significant risk of litigation. We can go back yet again to this point about certainty. Businesses, including the clients of my firm, like a terrible level of legal certainty, have ordered their affairs on the basis of the existing law. The purpose of the withdrawal act, as I've said, was as far as possible to preserve that law with as much certainty and continuity as possible. I think that, normally speaking, that succeeded. There wasn't actually much litigation immediately following our withdrawal, because the law continued more or less as before. Now what's happening, though, is a huge disruption to legal certainty in all the ways that we've described. First of all, because we simply don't know what's going to happen under this bill and, therefore, what the law will actually be by the end of 2023. That's very disruptive for business. Many business groups have said this, so I don't need to say it for them. It's uncertainties to what the law will be. It makes it very difficult for businesses—I'm thinking of businesses—but the same applies to all sorts of other organisations, every user of the law, who needs to order their affairs in such a way as to comply with the law and undertake their dealings with their counterparties in accordance with the law, that all of that is thrown into doubt. Of course, the law can change at any time. Businesses are used to the law changing, but not in this way, not across this huge spectrum of area, not all by secondary legislation and not within the space of the year. The risk that the law now gets changed in ways that are unclear, and certainly the disadvantage of particular interests. To go back to the point about the hierarchies, this is not just about the power, but what the bill says itself about the abolition of doctrine of sovereignty, of supremacy, for example. That changes the meaning of the law in some way that is in the interest of a business to litigate. I think that that must be a significant risk. This disruption of certainty, this disruption of business, might very well prompt disputes and always would go to litigation. Obviously, clients try and avoid litigation where possible, but there must be a risk of that. That will happen, I would think. I absolutely defer to the other two witnesses on the question of the practical likelihood of litigation, but I will just reinforce something that Sir Jonathan said about the reason that I worry about uncertainty. I suspect that it is a similar reason that the two worry about uncertainty. That is to do with the rule of law and the ability to make plans and to plan one's affairs and to plan one's life. When there is radical uncertainty, it is not possible to plan your affairs. The two reactions are to not make decisions or to make decisions that turn out to be wrong as the law changes. That is the problem with radical legal uncertainty. It destabilises the lives of individuals, organisations, businesses and public authorities because they do not know the outcome of the decisions before them so that they cannot plan their affairs. The theoretical side, which I am familiar with, says that one consequence of that is litigation. I will defer to the other two witnesses on the practical likelihood of that in this case. One final area of questioning is the issue of Henry VIII powers, which any time Henry VIII powers are spoken about tend to bring some controversy along with them. Prior to the publication of the bill, the public law project in reference to the House of Commons European Scotland committee inquiry into their retained EU law inquiry stated that, for all 10 VIII powers for the UK executive to make law, then any area of former EU competence would be constitutionally inappropriate. In the Scottish Parliament, our constitution Europe external affairs and culture committee in their recent report entitled the impact of Brexit on devolution, the committee stated that the extent of UK ministers' new delegated powers in devolved areas amounts to a significant constitutional change. We have considerable concerns that this has happened and has continued to happen on an ad hoc and iterative basis without any overarching consideration of the impact on how devolution works. Do you have any comment about Henry VIII's nature of many of the powers contained in the bill? Henry VIII powers are always slightly problematic because of the way they disturb our settled understanding of the hierarchy of different institutions that can legislate. I think there's an attempt made in this bill to manage that risk, isn't there, in that the main Henry VIII powers, the main way that the powers in this bill extend to be Henry VIII powers are that they're restricted, if I understand the bill correctly, to making changes to primary legislation where the provisions in that primary legislation were originally put there by the previous exercise of a Henry VIII power. So, there's a strange constraint over many of the powers in this bill, but I do worry that that repeats the error that I mentioned earlier that invites us to judge what the appropriate way to do something now is by looking how it was done in the past. So, if that thing's been done by secondary legislation in the past, it's appropriate to do it in that way now. This is an extension of that idea, isn't it, that if a thing is primary legislation but it was inserted into that primary legislation by secondary legislation, it's okay to go right back to the start of the process and revisit the original secondary legislation. I think that that perpetuates the error of doing things now, how they were done previously, where the focus should be on the substance of the policy area concerned and the nature of the change being made. I agree with that particular point that the origin of the provision not now to be the test, that should be what's the substance of the change now being made, but I tend to try and avoid using words like unconstitutional because in the end, if Parliament passes this bill, Parliament can pass it and if it passes it, these powers will be the powers that they are, and that's the way our constitution works, but they are undoubtedly very wide powers against the combination of the factors in this bill. Henry VIII's powers are, by definition, very wide. These are the widest of all because they include power to amend the bill itself, so they are very wide undoubtedly, but they apply across the huge range that this bill itself covers, as I keep saying. That, to me, brings alarm bells over the scope of the power, and then we come back to what's the scope, either in principle or in practice for Parliament, any of the Parliament, to scrutinise the exercise of those powers, and that is for many reasons we've said very limited, so taking all those things in combination without avoiding it unconstitutional, I think that it's a bad way to legislate. I don't have anything to add to that. I think that we've discussed and identified the issues that arise when powers are off the breadth and the scope. OK, thank you. Do colleagues have any further questions? Panelists, do you have anything else that you'd like to put on the record today that you haven't already highlighted? Morag? No, thank you. I'd like just to reiterate my thanks for the invitation to faculty and to me. Thank you. Thank you. Sir Jonathan? No, the same thing. Thank you. I think we've got a lot of ground. Thank you for asking me. No problem. Thank you. And Dr Tucker? Exactly the same answer. Nothing to add but thanks for inviting me and listening to me today. No problem. Thank you. I'd like to thank Sir Jonathan Jones, Dr Aaron Tucker and Morag Ross Casey for their extremely helpful evidence this morning. The committee may fall up by letter with any additional questions stemming from the meeting. Once again, thank you very much. I'll briefly suspend the meeting until Morag Ross to leave the room and for witnesses to leave Blue Jeans.