Legislation: Skeleton Bills and Delegated Powers

Lord Anderson of Ipswich Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)]

My Lords, one of the lesser highlights of my festive season, which I have to admit was almost as unexciting as the New Year’s Eve of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, seems to have been, was to read in the House magazine the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, on how to be a Minister.

“Few Acts of Parliament change much”,


he reflected.

“It is secondary legislation that delivers policy.”


Of the many recent examples that confirm the truth of the noble Lord’s words, the most striking for me is the commitment to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, introduced under the Climate Change Act 2008 without any opportunity for meaningful debate about what consequences that would involve. A more significant policy decision, now that Brexit is behind us, it would be hard to imagine.

It has been a joy to hear today the vigour and the independence of our chief champions, the noble Lords, Lord Blencathra and Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts. I thank them and their hard-working committees, so many past and present members of which are here today. There seems to be a consensus among your Lordships, including those such as the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, with recent experience of ministerial office, that the scrutiny tools we have for delegated legislation are mismatched to their task. There is little guidance as to when statutory instruments are inappropriate, or by what procedure they should be made, or as to when Henry VIII clauses are allowed. There is no power to amend, and the power of your Lordships’ House to reject delegated legislation—a power undiminished by the Parliament Acts—lies unused, apparently out of fear that it is one of those powers that cannot be used without massive and destructive retaliation.

The Hansard Society in its current review, which I welcome, has a quite a job on its hands. No doubt it will propose sensible solutions, as others have before. But then comes the important question posed by the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles. Why would any Government favour fewer skeleton Bills and more scrutiny of delegated powers? Let me suggest two reasons, both connected with the courts. First and rather obviously, the courts can strike down only provisions that do not appear in an Act of Parliament. If the Act is reduced to a skeleton, the meat is taken off the bone and may be more easily devoured. Secondly, the stronger the scrutiny of Parliament, the less the courts will intervene. I learned recently that the French administrative court, the Conseil d’État, suspended no fewer than 51 Covid restrictions in the year to April 2021, including for the infringement of human rights to assemble, to private life and to worship. In some 200 other Covid cases, according to the court’s website, the Government amended their practices or were given advice by the court before judgments were issued.

Our courts are far less inclined to intervene, partly because of the weight they place on parliamentary scrutiny. The position was set out by Lord Sumption in the second Bank Mellat case in the Supreme Court. He stated that,

“when a statutory instrument has been reviewed by Parliament, respect for Parliament’s constitutional function calls for considerable caution before the courts will hold it to be unlawful on some ground (such as irrationality) which is within the ambit of Parliament’s review. This applies with special force to legislative instruments founded on considerations of general policy”.

He added that parliamentary review may also be enough in itself to satisfy the requirement of fairness.

My time is over. Perhaps I may give the last few seconds from the Back Benches in this debate to the Member of Parliament who deprecated what he called

“the new fashion of legislation by way of skeleton”

and concluded that

“on the whole the old-fashioned way of saying in an Act of Parliament what is meant is certainly the better method of legislation.”—[Official Report, Commons, 1/8/1899; cols. 1072-73.]

His name was Augustine Birrell KC, and his critique was addressed to the Marquess of Salisbury’s second Government in 1899. It is high time, I suggest, to act on those sound instincts.

Northern Ireland Protocol

Lord Anderson of Ipswich Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely correct that 200 firms have ceased trading with Northern Ireland this year, including some quite significant ones. The existence of this customs process between Great Britain and Northern Ireland is at the heart of some of the problems we are experiencing with the protocol. My noble friend is also right that Article 13(8) of the protocol provides for successor arrangements. This was envisaged and explicitly written into the protocol when we negotiated it. It reflects the fact that it is not unusual in any way to renegotiate or supersede international agreements, which is what we hope to do in this process.

[Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister said in Lisbon that we are being asked to apply EU law in part of our territory without our consent. Article 5 of the protocol provides that significant parts of EU law,

“shall apply to and in the United Kingdom in respect of Northern Ireland”.

Having agreed that protocol, how can the Minister say that this law applies without our consent?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, there is, of course, a difference between what is in an international legal instrument and what happens day to day, as I am sure is well understood. The political difficulty being created in Northern Ireland is because individual legal instruments, which come out in profusion from the European Union day to day, are applied automatically in Northern Ireland without any sort of process. That system is not sustainable, which is why these governance arrangements need to change to bring them more in line with democratic norms elsewhere. We need to find a solution that everybody in Northern Ireland can get behind and which they think represents their interests.

House of Lords Appointments Commission

Lord Anderson of Ipswich Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)]

My Lords, on a day when the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has been credited by the Daily Telegraph with world-leading rules on online child safety, and scientists and technologists as distinguished as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, have shared with us their vast expertise on the Environment Bill, no further reminder is needed of how the effectiveness and reputation of this House have been enhanced by Peers recommended for appointment by the Appointments Commission. It is a shame, as my noble friend Lord Kerr has just said, that this stream of talent has recently slowed to a trickle. As one of just five Cross-Benchers since 2015 to have enjoyed the good fortune—the outrageous good fortune, in my case—of appointment by this route, I support the Private Member’s Bill brought forward by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, and his remarks in opening this debate.

Another appointed second Chamber, the Canadian Senate, has been transformed over the past five years by the creation of an independent advisory board made up of federal and provincial members. The board recommends five non-political appointees for each vacancy and the Prime Minister chooses between them. Independent Senators now outnumber those with a political affiliation. The House of Lords Library reported last year that almost 60% of Canadians thought that these changes would improve the Senate in the longer term.

The constitution of Canada prevents the board being established under statute, but no such constraint exists here. So I hope noble Lords will share my view that this is not only a “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative”, as the award-winning headline famously had it, but an idea that we could and should build upon.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)]

My Lords, it is very good to see the old House back. I fear that one thing that might not change is that from this Dispatch Box I am not necessarily able to give the noble Baroness opposite the delightful response that she might wish.

I thought it was an interesting short debate, and it is right that we debate these topics. The only speech to which I took exception, which I am sad about, because it was by a noble Lord I greatly respect, was by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who talked about scandal and corruption. There was a sub-theme that was taken up by one or two others who spoke. It serves none of us to present an image of this House or any political party as imbued and filled with scandal, corruption and fixing of the kind which the noble Lord implied. It helps no one. I could say that those in glass houses should not throw bricks, but I am not going to go back over ancient history that does not help any of us.

I thank my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth for the spirit and intelligence with which, as ever, he put forward his arguments. He spoke with the authority of, as he described it, the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber. I always feel, when that great pressure group is mentioned, that I should go to the House of Lords Library after the debate and look out for the minutes of this extremely powerful group that seeks to influence the composition of Parliament and the avowed list of its members. Those matters may well be available in your Lordships’ House, but given that we have heard from a spokesman for that group, I think that many in the House would like to know more about it.

I thank my noble friend for this opportunity to discuss the important work of the House of Lords Appointments Commission; it is important work. As many of us will recall, the commission was set up in 2000 after a period in which—I am sorry to remind the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, of this—there had been, shall I say, considerable comment on the nature of appointments to your Lordships’ House. It is an independent, advisory, non-departmental public body and its purpose, as noble Lords well know, is to recommend non-party-political appointments to this place as well as to advise on all House of Lords appointments for propriety. I think it would be fairly acknowledged by noble Lords on all sides of the House that this is a job that the commission does well and has done well. In doing that job, it is treated with all due respect—full respect—by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, as it was by preceding Prime Ministers.

The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, made a point that is important in an appointed House. As he knows, if we have a non-elected House and there is an elected House, the public decide the balance between the parties. However, the balance of political strength in the House is obviously always an issue for discussion and consideration; my noble friend Lord Balfe made a similar point. I remind the House of what was said by my noble friends on this side: a commanding majority was given to my right honourable friend Mr Johnson in the last election. Despite what was said, it is a travesty to say that the Conservative Party is in a position to dominate your Lordships’ House. I respectfully refer noble Lords to the three Divisions that have already taken place today and the others that I suspect will take place after dinner. The fact is that, numerically, the Conservative Party is 130 short of a majority; of course, it is far more than that in mathematical terms because the appointment of more Peers would increase the number.

The background is that, at the end of the period of the struggles over Brexit, this House fell away from one of its duties, which is to pay due respect to the opinion of the public. We lived through a period in that zombie Parliament in which the House of Commons and some Members of your Lordships’ House made it difficult for the Government to be carried on. One of the fundamental principles of our Parliament is that a Government must be able to get their business. That does not mean that they must win every vote—the Government do not ask to win every vote; they wish to listen to the points of view put forward by your Lordships’ House, and indeed always do—but, at the end of the day, the Government must be able to get their business. That is the background to this debate; I will come back to it a little later.

The noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, made an interesting point, which was taken up by others, including my noble friend Lady Fookes. He asked whether it was necessary that everyone who wishes to have a peerage, or who is felt worthy of having one, needs to be a Member of your Lordships’ House. That is an idea that I have heard mooted before. It is not something on which I am going to comment in this debate, but I will simply say that I thought the noble Lord made an interesting point.

The noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, complained about the representation of Cross-Bench Peers in the House. Setting aside the category of non-affiliated Peers, about which many of us with different points of view may have opinions, Cross-Bench Peers currently account for 23% of the composition of your Lordships’ House. Almost any proposition for reform that has come forward in the time that I have been following your Lordships’ House has said that somewhere between 20% and 25% is probably about right for the independent Cross-Bench element.

[Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)]

I would like to clarify that I made no such complaint, and no such complaint was intended.

[Lord True (Con)]

I am grateful that it was not intended. What I heard was a complaint that not enough Cross-Bench Peers were being appointed, and I think Hansard will show that the noble Lord made that point. One of the considerations regarding who is to be appointed is the overall balance in the House, a point that has been made from every perspective in this debate. To me it is perfectly legitimate, in the light of the noble Lord’s complaints about the number of appointments, to point out the current level of composition of Cross-Bench Peers.

The commission has two main functions, which are to nominate and recommend individuals for appointment as non-party-political life Peers and to vet nominations for life Peers, including those nominated by the political parties, in order to ensure high standards of propriety. I repeat that I believe it does this well. I am not going to follow any personal attacks on any Member of your Lordships’ House. I believe in the traditional principles of this House that all noble Lords stand on their honour and behave honourably, and I believe that those who are sent here and will serve here will demonstrate that they can aspire to and deliver those high standards.

It is worth noting that the conclusions reached by the House of Lords advisory committee regarding nominations are advisory. That is the gravamen of this debate although, as far as I can hear, no one who was arguing for a statutory commission said that it should be more than advisory. Everyone concedes—including even my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth; it is in his Bill, as I read it—that the Prime Minister should be able, in exceptional circumstances, to ignore and appoint outside the advice of the appointments commission. The conclusions reached by the commission are considered by any Prime Minister, alongside other wider factors, on a case-by-case basis. Ultimately, it is for the Prime Minister to recommend which individuals should be appointed to the House of Lords. As my noble friend Lady Noakes pointed out—firmly, I accept—it is the constitutional position in this country, as was also implied in the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, about the disfavour into which David Lloyd George fell, that ultimately there is accountability for a Prime Minister in the way in which he uses that power.

I do not wish to pick an argument with my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth on opinion polls, but while he was speaking I looked up the 2017 poll to which he referred. In it, when people were asked which were the most important factors in determining how legitimate the House of Lords was as a Chamber of Parliament, the first, with 37%, was the view that the House should make decisions in accordance with public opinion, while the second was that the House should consider legislation carefully. My noble friend Lady Noakes alluded to one of the problems with those who have been appointed by the House of Lords Appointments Commission. This is no criticism of the commission; it is a fact. When it came to the first big vote in 2017 on seeking to obstruct Brexit, the Cross-Benchers who had been appointed by the House of Lords Appointments Commission between 2001 and 2015 were split five to one against the Government, a few months after a 52% to 48% referendum.

On the advice of the Prime Minister, the sovereign, who is the fount of all honour, formally confers all peerages, and I believe that should continue to be the case. The House of Lords Appointments Commission has an important advisory role, but it is advice. That is the situation that was created by a Labour Government and operated by them for 10 years, by the coalition for five and by a Conservative Government for six.

The Government have no plans to change the role or remit of the Appointments Commission. The organisation’s legal status does not affect its remit. It will continue to advise on appointments in the same way that it does now. I can assure the House that the Prime Minister will continue to place great weight on the commission’s careful and considered advice. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, made a courageous point, which is never welcome to your Lordships’ House, but I do not think it is specifically germane to the question of my noble friend Lord Norton.

To sum up, the Government consider that the House of Lords Appointments Commission performs an important role in advising the Prime Minister on appointments. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton. The Prime Minister continues to place great weight on this advice, and the Government have no plans to place the commission on a statutory footing.

European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

Lord Anderson of Ipswich Excerpts

3rd reading & 2nd reading & Committee negatived & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB) [V]]

My Lords, these agreements fairly reflect the political priorities of their parties. These included, on our side, a dogmatic and substantively empty notion of sovereignty that confounds the reputation that we once enjoyed as Europe’s canny pragmatists. As a young man in the office of Commissioner Lord Cockfield, I observed the removal of precisely the red tape that now returns to constrict us, so my enthusiasm for this deal has its limits. In the security field, a particular regret is the loss of access to the immensely useful SIS II database. We must hope that dogma on the European side does not defeat the data adequacy determination on which so much else will depend. However, given the dismal alternative, I greet these agreements with relief, see much in them that is good, and will focus today on the terms of the Bill itself.

I would describe it as an essay-crisis Bill. Four increasingly expansive styles may be spotted in its hastily assembled pages. The first style, seen at the start in the treatment of criminal records, is the careful hand-threading of these agreements into existing law. On VAT fraud and social security, a more broad-brush approach is taken. Whole protocols to the agreement are simply pasted into domestic law—whether seamlessly or not, only time will tell. Thirdly, we have delegated powers. These clauses feature elements that your Lordships found exorbitant in the 2018 EU withdrawal Bill, including a power to create new criminal offences punishable by up to two years in prison, and a bootstraps power to amend the Bill itself, if “appropriate”. Henry VIII has been on the steroids again.

Finally, to cover any gaps left by even these broad provisions, we have Clause 29, which requires our judges to give effect to domestic law

“with such modifications as are required for the purposes of implementing”

the agreements. The objective is noble, but implementation often requires choices, and to impose those choices on the courts is to push them towards the forbidden ground of policy. The existing legal doctrines of direct effect and strong interpretation have inherent limits which avoid that result. Clause 29 contains no such limits. Perhaps it is an afterthought. It certainly needs knocking into shape.

This is a rushed Bill—inevitably—which I strongly regret that we are in no position to scrutinise or to improve. But, as the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, said, our committees will scrutinise it after it becomes law. If necessary improvements are identified, I hope that we will find a way of making them.

European Union: Negotiations (European Union Committee Report)

Lord Anderson of Ipswich Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)]

My Lords, in a constructive spirit, I will raise two matters concerning civil justice. My purpose is not to press the Minister on the Government’s bottom line, which of course he will not—and should not—share with the House while negotiations are ongoing. Rather it is to test the currently uncertain limits of the Government’s aspirations and to encourage them to aim high.

The first matter relates to judicial co-operation in the field of family law. This is the subject of the very last paragraph of the Command Paper, all three and a half lines of it. It says simply that the UK will continue to work with the EU through multilateral precedents set by the Hague Conference on Private International Law. If lawyers agree on anything, which I accept is rare, it is that, in relation to family law, the EU’s Brussels II revised regime is faster and more flexible than the Hague conventions. What does this mean in practice? It is only under the Brussels II regime that a father who is given access to his child after a divorce in Spain can automatically enforce that contact order in the UK. In the case of a child which is abducted from England to Poland, under the Hague convention, the left-behind parent in England is limited to a remedy in Poland; under Brussels II, they have, if they need it, a second bite of the cherry: the ability to ask the English court to return the child. We would also lose the maintenance regulation which allows someone in the UK to go to an EU country to enforce a maintenance order made by a British court.

I understand very well that we are out of the EU, that we cannot put the clock back and that the Government prefer not to sign up to regimes where the Court of Justice of the EU has the final say, except of course in the substantial respects already agreed in the withdrawal agreement. But we are looking here at real disadvantages to real children. As one of our witnesses said—and I declare an interest as a barrister and a member of the EU Justice Sub-Committee, which has been taking evidence on this—any child abducted from a European Union state will be in a more difficult position after Brexit than before. It will be a terrible shame to settle for something demonstrably worse than what we have, yet the self-imposed deadline looms and the cursory reference to family law in the Command Paper suggests that it may not have been given the importance that it deserves. So, I have two questions for the Minister. Is there any aspiration to negotiate something with the EU that improves on the Hague conventions? If not, will we, as EU law permits in the field of family law, seek bilateral agreements with the countries where we would make most use of them?

The other matter I want to raise is the UK’s participation in the unified patent court agreement, which, as noble Lords will know, is an international agreement made outside the EU’s formal structures by 25 states including the United Kingdom. The court is not an EU institution. That is why the pharmaceuticals and life sciences section of the court is earmarked for Aldgate Tower in London. Unlike the European Medicines Agency, which had to leave London, as the noble Lord, Lord Hain, said, it is not an EU entity. The court will hear cases on the validity and infringement of European patents and unitary patents granted by the European Patent Office, itself a non-EU intergovernmental organisation with 36 members. The advantages of the UPC for innovative British companies are self-evident. It will be a one-stop shop for patent disputes to be resolved continent-wide. That is of particular importance to research-led small and medium enterprises, on which I asked a Written Question last week. More than that, if the UPC goes ahead, it will be an instrument for the transmission of good British practice across Europe. The reputation of our intellectual property judges is second to none and the procedural rules of the UPC draw heavily on those of our own intellectual property enterprise court. It is true that the UPC agreement obliges the court to refer any question of EU law that may arise during a patent case to the Court of Justice, but the main elements of patent law—obviousness, novelty and infringement—are not governed by EU law. Questions of EU law do not arise in patent cases, save in very limited areas such as supplementary protection certificates. Indeed, so dominant is the intergovernmental element of this system that the UPC agreement is not even mentioned in the Command Paper on the future relationship.

On 28 February, the Law Society Gazette quoted a Downing Street spokesman as saying that the UK will not be seeking involvement in the court and the associated unitary patent. However, that report has been, so far as I can see, officially neither confirmed nor denied. The Justice Sub-Committee has written to the Government about this. Can the Minister tell us today whether a final decision has been taken on UK participation in the unified patent court? If the door has been closed, why was this not announced to Parliament on the record? If the door remains open, which I dare to hope it does, I urge the Minister to cast aside dogma and use his influence pragmatically and in the interests of the innovative British firms on whom our future outside the EU particularly depends. Other noble Lords will speak for themselves, but as urged by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, I have moved on. Brexit has happened and, whatever our views on that, we must all now unite in seeking our best possible future as a self-governing nation. However, as one of our committee’s witnesses, the chair of the Intellectual Property Bar Association, Daniel Alexander QC, said last week, if one wants to be a self-governing nation and a powerful one, it is wrong to reject institutions that help you to be an independent, powerful and self-governing nation. He was referring to the unified patent court—inter governmentalism, so lightly tempered by EU law that only the ideologically purist could possibly object. It will strengthen us in an area where we need to be at our strongest. In our own interests, let us not turn our back on it.

Finally, I listened carefully to what the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, said but, as I read the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, it calls not for any parliamentary veto—still less a veto vested in this House—but simply for information, updates and scrutiny. That, as I understand it, is what we are for. On that basis, and subject to what we might yet hear from the Minister and others, I am minded to support the amendment.

Referendums: Parliamentary Democracy

Lord Anderson of Ipswich Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I am grateful for this opportunity to make my maiden speech in such an interesting and topical debate. I thank everybody who made my introduction to your Lordships’ House so enjoyable, including my supporters, the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and those—in particular, Black Rod and her staff—who have started to explain to a rather slow student both the geography and the procedures of this astonishing and remarkable place.

I am proud to associate myself with the town where my wife and daughters were born and where I have lived for most of my adult life. Since Anglo-Saxon times, Ipswich has prospered from trade with Europe, frictionless or otherwise. It stands also for global Britain, having manufactured the first railway locomotives used in China. Another distinction was lost without too many regrets just last week: the record of Ipswich Town Football Club in providing the England team with each of the managers to have taken it to a World Cup semi-final.

But my origins lie far from East Anglia, in non-conformist Yorkshire and in Scotland: in a small business in Skipton run by my Yorkshire grandfather, William Mason, a motorcycle champion, who later filled the sermons he gave as a Methodist lay preacher with the geology, physics and astronomy he loved and knew so well; and in the Kinloch Anderson company, best known as a kilt maker in Edinburgh and now in Leith, which this year celebrates its 150th anniversary in its sixth generation of family management.

My mother and father forsook their own family businesses for a new one—schoolteaching and, later, headmastering. Among their pupils at different schools in Scotland and England were the heir to the Throne and future Labour and Conservative Prime Ministers. I hope that that is a cause for congratulation, but in any event, with no prospects of equalling that achievement, I turned instead to the law. Since then I have scratched a living in a range of courts, as advocate and part-time judge, but I am most familiar with the courts of the European Union.

Opinions of course differ on whether the EU has contributed to the unprecedented peace and prosperity enjoyed in our continent over the past 70 years or merely coincided with it. But on almost any view, the European project constitutes the most advanced expression the world has yet seen of the international rule of law—a state of affairs to which British judges and lawyers have contributed with distinction, including my own mentors, the late Lord Slynn of Hadley, Sir David Edward and Mr David Vaughan QC, who sadly died earlier this year.

Change came for me in 2010, when I was invited to succeed the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, in his remarkable work as Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation. Since then, in that capacity and others, I have spent most of my time in the invigorating if sometimes treacherous waters of counterterrorism, counterextremism and investigatory powers. This has left me with a deep appreciation for those who work in intelligence and law enforcement to keep us safe, both in Great Britain and Northern Ireland and indeed abroad. We think of the three police officers whose great and exemplary bravery was recognised only today. I have appreciation for others as well, not least the British Muslims who have impressed me on so many occasions with their energy, generosity and desire to contribute fully to the life of this country, and finally for your Lordships’ House, whose real and beneficial influence on the law in these areas inspired me to fill out the application form to join your number.

That leads me to this debate. In translating the result of the recent referendum into a position that commands assent in Parliament, we seem to be in some difficulties. No doubt those difficulties have many causes, but our current predicament highlights for me two linked issues relating to the use of referendums in a parliamentary democracy. The first is the problems that are bound to arise when opinion in Parliament opposes major constitutional change and the majority of the people demands it. It was instructive to learn from the University College report, at paragraph 2.47, that the usual practice in other countries is for constitutional change to need the endorsement of Parliament before it is put to the people.

Secondly, it is surely at the least highly desirable that irreversible constitutional changes should be made not just on the say so of a bare majority of those who voted on a particular day but by the settled will of a clear majority of the electorate. That is all the more important when, in contrast to the usual practice in other countries, a referendum is the sole decision point for such a change.

To this end, mechanisms such as voter turnout thresholds and supermajorities—a familiar feature of corporate governance—are available. The Constitution Committee of this House recommended in 2010 that such safeguards should not be ruled out. I was delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, make a similar point and was disappointed that the otherwise excellent University College report stopped short of endorsing these mechanisms, even in exceptional cases.

I am exhausting my ability to be uncontroversial and I have just exhausted my time as well. I thank noble Lords for their welcome and their indulgence.