Surely. In a sense, that goes back to my original set of comments: let us try to move beyond clause 11 or park it to the side. My big message is: “Let’s get on with it.” That is not directed at the committee, I hasten to say; it is directed at the Governments.
I am pleased with developments over the past month or so. It is great to see that, finally, the joint ministerial committee on European Union negotiations is meeting and is agreeing a set of principles of what common frameworks might look like and how they might be constructed. That is a great thing, and I am really pleased with that. I was also pleased to see the Prime Minister speaking to the Welsh First Minister and then, yesterday, to the Scottish First Minister about precisely those issues. To me, that is exactly what should be happening.
That said, I place on record the fact that much valuable time has been lost. At this stage, there is a list of, I think, 111 areas of intersection between the Scottish devolution settlement and incoming EU competences. There is a list of 64 in Wales, and there is another list in Northern Ireland, although that has not yet been published.
I will be frank. That has taken something like 15 or 17 months—I lose track of how far on we are from the EU referendum—but, to be generous, it should have taken 17 weeks. We are a year behind where we should be on that. It does not take that long to do the technical job of working out where the areas of intersection are. Nevertheless, we are where we are. There is movement, and that is good.
We need to sit down and negotiations need to happen. I am sure that the secretary of state, Mr Mundell, has it right when he says that the first thing that we should do is look at the lists and identify the areas where we all agree that there must be common frameworks and the ones where we all agree that we really do not need common frameworks. Then there are the areas in the middle, on which we must have a serious discussion. That is the next stage.
As we go through that process, the natural thing to do is get rid of clause 11, and, in discussing the areas in which we need common frameworks, talk about reservations in the devolution statutes. That will get over the problem that Alan Page rightly flagged up around how to join up a conferred powers model and a reserved powers model. It seems to me that that would go with the grain of the devolution statutes. The big message is: “Get on with it.”
Returning to clause 11, it seems to me that the exercise of parliamentary sovereignty in the bill is the wrong way round: it is being used up front, and that is not how we need to go about it. I would argue to the UK Government—and I have argued to it—that parliamentary sovereignty should, in a sense, be a reserved power. We should have discussions. As David Mundell has said, we do not have frameworks by imposition; we have them by agreement. There could conceivably be a case—naturally, I have been pressed on this when I have given evidence at Westminster—in which the Administrations just cannot agree and the UK Government believes that a fundamental union interest is in play. It is conceivable that parliamentary sovereignty might have to be exercised at that point, and we would be into Sewel convention territory. I do not think that that would happen, for reasons relating to the mutual interests of the different countries of the United Kingdom. However, if it did happen, one can conceive of parliamentary sovereignty being used as a reserved power in that situation to resolve matters. That is where I stand on that issue.
I want to park clause 11 and go through the process of the work. Maybe I am an optimist in life, but I think that a lot of that can be sorted out. I think that there would be widespread agreement around this committee room that some things in the list really do not need common frameworks whereas some do. There would then be a natural debate about the things in the middle.