Part of Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill - Committee (2nd Day) – in the House of Lords am 6:30 pm ar 24 Ebrill 2024.
Lord Borwick
Ceidwadwyr
6:30,
24 Ebrill 2024
I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend again. One of the problems I see with this is the great difficulty in making a change except through statutory instruments, and the amount of time this takes. Whenever the Secretary of State decides that a change must happen, it must happen more quickly than through the route laid down in the Bill. At present, the amount of time doing the statutory instrument, and the fact that we cannot debate its details or change it, makes the whole thing very unfortunate.
There is something to be said for the point, made by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, that there is a route through that is used by the Lord Chancellor. I had not appreciated that the deferment rate had so many different implications. I am sure we could call it something different for this purpose, and thus carve out the rate for property matters. But, with a delay of one year or more between a decision and taking action, it is a very difficult subject to structure using the statutory instrument route.
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Many hundreds of amendments are proposed by members to major bills as they pass through committee stage, report stage and third reading in both Houses of Parliament.
In the end only a handful of amendments will be incorporated into any bill.
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Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
