Draft European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2018

Oliver Letwin Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2018 General Committees

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole has volunteered to sit on pretty much every Delegated Legislation Committee available. There is a programme, and my Department is co-ordinating an overview.

[Sir Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes a jocular remark, but will he expand on the Government’s decision to use the affirmative procedure for this order? There is a sifting Committee, which we agreed as a result of a long discussion. Part of the reason for creating it was to make sure that important things are properly discussed, but it was partly also to make sure that very unimportant things are not. We are clearly all going to go completely mad—if we are not already so—if we have to deal with every totally uncontroversial and uninteresting piece of crypto-constitutional legislation conducted through statutory instruments in this form. Will he therefore give us an undertaking that really unimportant SIs will be put before the sifting Committee, so that it can decide whether they should be dealt with by this method or by the negative procedure?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

If only my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) were present to answer that. I can give my right hon. Friend that assurance. Before the Committee stands a very junior Minister who was very keen to ensure that he did not make a mistake in the laying of his first statutory instrument. However, that is exactly the purpose of the sifting Committee.

To answer a question that the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich asked, I have had conversations with the chairs of the sifting Committees in the Lords and the Commons to give them a rough idea of the Government’s plans. My Department will absolutely co-ordinate the flow of SIs so that we have a functioning statute book as we leave the European Union.

Question put and agreed to.