Deputy Presiding Officer, there are really three points that I wanted to contribute in this particular debate. The first point actually relates to the timescale for the consideration of this. I started reading these 450 pages this morning. I don’t believe there is a single person in this Chamber who has yet had time or the ability to actually digest the incredibly technical content of this.

Now, the Prime Minister said that, if he doesn’t get his timetable through, he will pull the Bill. Well, listen, I think that on something as important as this, constitutionally, if he’d rather pull his Brexit Bill than have it face proper security, then he shouldn’t have brought it before Parliament in the very first place. And it is also making a mockery of our parliamentary procedures internationally.

I see this comment from the Institute for Government, who’ve given so much advice during this process. What they say is:

'the Brexit Bill would have less time in the Commons than the Wild Animals in Circuses Act.'

They say, an Act, that affects,

'only 19 wild animals left in circuses in the U.K.—among them a zebra, two camels, three racoons and a zebu.'

I don’t know what a zebu is.

'All of whom now have the honor of attracting more House of Commons' debate than…the historic legal treaty securing the U.K.’s departure from the European Union.'

This is not the way to do proper constitutional reform.

That’s the first point I make. The second point I make relates to the issue of workers' rights, which to many of us has been such a fundamental issue. It's an issue that was such an important promise during the Brexit referendum—that there would be guarantees of workers' rights. I remember how hard we fought to get the social chapter signed, and how pleased we were when it was signed in 1997. And I tell you, it was a fight—it was a fight on our side, because Blair wanted to cherry-pick bits and pieces, and it was really the trade unions who said, ‘No, we take the whole of the social chapter, because we signed up to social Europe.’ I’m thinking of a conversation with the First Minister the other day, who said, ‘Yes, I remember those debates well. What was the Tory position?’ ‘Up yours, Delors.’ Quite frankly, that has very much been part of the Tory position ever since.

There was a point that was made very cleverly, I think, by Keir Starmer during the debate in Westminster, and it was this—because we heard today from the UKIP/Brexit; whatever they’re called these days—if you're going to make the point that we have certain terms and conditions and employment legislation that is better than EU standards, well of course the point is that EU standards have always been a baseline. There has never been any restriction on providing better and higher standards, and if it is the case that you don't want to reduce employment legislation, then why abolish the baseline? The answer, as we know quite clearly, is because the intention is to shred the ability to protect employment rights—those rights that we got from the social chapter. And if you read this document—and I read those particular bits—there is no guarantee in there that that baseline will in any way be protected, and nor could it be protected, because in order to do a trade deal with the US, in order to do that US trade deal, we have to agree to the abolition and the lowering of standards in order to be compliant and have a level playing field with the United States. So, the Tory Party should be honest that that really is their intention and that has always been one of the big bugbears of membership of the EU in the first place anyway—the fact that it gave that social chapter and it had that particular social agenda.

I think the final point I'd like to make is this: if you refer to section 36 of the draft Bill, there is the most bizarre statement in there in terms of sovereignty, and sovereignty at a time, actually, when there's also the abolition of section 20 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, which is the body that actually gives time for Parliament to scrutinise international treaties. That is being abolished within the Bill, and I haven't heard any discussion of that yet. Just leaving that particular part aside, if we look at that part of the Bill in terms of sovereignty and so on, if the intention of Parliament is to rely on that section 36 and to proceed in such a way that it basically drives a nail into the coffin of Sewel, then that is again yet another move towards the break-up of the United Kingdom. I refer to this section within the legislative consent memorandum that went before the Scottish Parliament, and they refer to our own paper that we discussed and supported in this Chamber only the other week:

'The Welsh Government recently published proposals which endorsed the idea of the United Kingdom as an association based on a recognition of popular sovereignty in each part of the UK, and concluded that the traditional doctrine of sovereignty of parliament no longer provides a firm foundation for the constitution of the UK'.

That is the position that was adopted by this Chamber, recognised by the Scottish Parliament, but not recognised anywhere within any of these documents. And if we get to a situation where the UK Government presses ahead, it is the end of Sewel and it is the end of the primacy of the devolution statutes within our UK constitutional structure, and it is a step on the way to the break-up of the United Kingdom.