Trade Bill

Lord Lisvane Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 20th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

As far as I am concerned, the train has left the station. Obviously, I come from a business background and there are ambiguities in legislation. I have had experience of Pepper v Hart being quite useful in cases where it has not been clear, in a technical regulation, what is needed. What my noble and learned friend has said suggests that it still sits there so that you can look at what was originally said by, for example, a Minister taking a Bill through, helping the courts to clarify what is being said. I hope that the huge constitutional change that we are presiding over today does not take that away completely because, if so, we are passing something for a wider area than the Trade Bill without having looked at all the ramifications.

[Lord Lisvane (CB)]

My Lords, I do not wish to detain your Lordships unnecessarily, but in a previous life I spent three years as the Clerk of Legislation at the north end of this building. One of the duties of the Clerk of Legislation is to read through the Explanatory Notes and approve them for every government Bill. A key part of that process is ensuring that there is no advocacy or advertising of the merits of a part of a Bill in the Explanatory Notes. Another factor to be taken into account is when Explanatory Notes tend to give an interpretation or an additional gloss on something that actually ought to be on the face of the Bill. With that background, I thoroughly welcome the exchanges of the past few minutes.