Agriculture Bill (Eighth sitting)

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Thangam Debbonaire

Thursday 1st November 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Jenny Chapman]

Amendment 77 again raises the issue of the negative and affirmative procedures. I will not test the Committee’s patience by going through all of that again.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

Aw!

[Jenny Chapman]

I will resist the temptation of the Whip. If Members look at page 7 of the Bill and see where that is included, they can probably get the gist of what I am trying to achieve with amendment 77. It is worth asking the Government to consider this because clause 9(2)(b) says that the Secretary of State can by regulations make modifications.

To be fair to the Minister, he does attempt to put parameters on what the Secretary of State would be able to do, but he talks about simplifying or modifying the operation of any provision. “Simplifying” and “modifying” are quite subjective terms: what he considers a simplification of a measure, I might consider a drastic change or something that would do harm to those subject to it.

Again, the power in the clause is slightly wider than it ought to be to justify the negative procedure. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response to that point and whether he might consider, at later stages, amending the “simplifying or improving” terminology to justify his desire for the negative procedure and, if not, whether he might consider making an alteration to allow use of the affirmative procedure.