Lords Grand Committee — sitting of 7 September 2026: transcript & video

00:11 - 00:36

Speaker 1

Order. A division in the chamber while we are sitting, the committee will adjourn as soon as the division bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes. Grand Committee on the Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill. Clause 37, amendment 92C, Lord Clement-Jones.

00:36 - 03:34

Speaker 2

My Lords, I think we're in the final furlong and I rise to move amendment 92C standing in my name on the marshalled list and to speak to the closely aligned amendment 95C under my name. My Lords, these amendments raise a profound and non-negotiable constitutional principle. They respond directly to the almost always authoritative recommendations of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in its seventh report of this session and are strongly supported by the principles laid down by the Select Committee on the Constitution in its third report. Together, these amendments seek to delete two deeply objectionable provisions that represent a classic example of secondary legislation creep, provisions where the executive is seeking a blank cheque to unilaterally rewrite the rules. My Lords, let's first look at amendment 92C, which targets clause 37 and seeks to leave out subsection 7 on page 62, line 24.

Under the bill as drafted, clause 37(7) grants the Secretary of State the unilateral power to make regulations to amend the act itself in order to change and potentially dilute the consultation and parliamentary scrutiny requirements that apply to a code of practice. My Lords, this is a Henry VIII power of really quite an extensive kind. In the government's original delegated powers memorandum of November 2025, the department, as it then was, argued that this power was necessary to allow flexibility in case a 40-day parliamentary scrutiny period became, in their words, unfeasible or a detriment to the quality of the code. But my Lords, as the Delegated Powers Committee has correctly noted in its seventh report, the rules governing how Parliament scrutinises the executive must be set by Parliament in primary legislation. They should not be subject to the administrative convenience of a minister.

Allowing a minister to use secondary legislation to alter or weaken the very procedural safeguards this House has debated, my Lords, is not constitutionally correct. The committee's recommendation is clear and unambiguous: subsection 7 must be removed. And this brings me to amendment 95C, which seeks to leave out subsection 5 on page 64, line 18. Clause 40 requires the Secretary of State to lay a report before Parliament on the operation of this cyber security legislation.

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