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There are some interesting points about other procedures that could be applied, such as requiring the Government to make explicit statements.

There was also an interesting suggestion made by Dr Grez Hidalgo that the committee should have the power to delay a stage of a bill. I am interested in that because I think that committees in this Parliament have that power. In the previous session of Parliament, I sat on the Education and Skills Committee. The committee refused to publish a stage 1 report on the Children and Young People (Information Sharing) (Scotland) Bill, the purpose of which was to correct the issues around information sharing regarding the named person policy.

First, I would be interested to know whether it would be helpful for committees to have the ability to undertake greater stage 2 scrutiny. Secondly, I wonder whether some of these points are actually about parliamentarians’ awareness of what we are seeking to do. That relates to Dr Tickell’s earlier point about interrogating the legal consequences and the parameters of bills, not just the policy that is being presented in them.

Do the witnesses think that codifying that kind of greater stage 2 scrutiny would be helpful, and that parliamentarians need to alter how they view legislation—and therefore scrutinise it as it progresses—in order to deal with that?

I was going to come to that.

As an aside, I will say that that is an incredibly helpful insight for the member’s bill that I am in the process of drafting, so thank you very much.

Do you have a view on the frequency of the use of Henry VIII powers and secondary powers? Is it going up, or is it about the same? Are there differences in the approach that you see, especially given your 25 years of experience?

In essence, you are saying that it is more important to look at the scope and effect of what is being legislated for, rather than the number of particular instances or clauses, because then you are just counting—

That is really helpful. On a side note, it is always interesting to look at how the machinery of the UK Government interacts with that of devolved Governments, so having people at that interface is useful.

You have both stated a number of times that the goal is to provide clear and understandable legislation. I have two specific questions on that. I note that the OPC has drafting guidance. First, how is that set out? Secondly, we heard from the previous witnesses that, when legislation sets out powers in secondary legislation, it is sometimes not at all clear what ministers will do with those powers. Are such scenarios caught in the guidance or your broader practice? Is there a point at which you say, “We cannot tell what this legislation is going to do. Is this the right thing to do in terms of setting it and framing it in secondary legislation?”

Have you noticed anything different in the approach to and practice in drafting, specifically with regard to secondary legislation and legislative powers?

This has been an excellent discussion. The observation was made that making a hard distinction between things that are framework bills and things that are not is not as helpful as thinking about how powers are framed. Also, this is as much about practice and culture as it is about drafting. Those are my takeaways. I am really grateful to the witnesses for their contributions.

That brings me neatly on to my substantive questions. I want to look at the practical changes that we could bring into parliamentary procedure around framework legislation as a whole. As the panel has observed, it is better to think about the provisions in legislation and the powers that could be conferred on the executive, rather than trying to decide whether the legislation as a whole is over the line or not.

I was very interested in one proposal in the written submissions that we got, which was about having some sort of written agreement or guidance between the legislature and the executive. I think that both Dr Grez Hidalgo and Dr Fox had similar proposals in their submissions. Dr Fox described it as being a “Concordat on Legislative Delegation”. Will you explain what features that should have? Would that contain the principles that I alluded to in my earlier supplementary question? What did the Hansard Society have in mind when it made that proposal?

I was planning to address that issue separately because I know that there are witnesses at this meeting who disagree with the power to amend because of the consequential effects that it might have. I am interested in hearing witnesses’ views on whether sifting, more evidence taking and the possibility of amending would be sensible procedural changes to the way that secondary legislation is examined.

I suppose that my response is that the Pandora’s box has already been opened and there is a lot of legislation out there, so we need to deal with how Governments use it.