The Manx Government’s Brexit Bill is set to face its final challenge in the House of Keys today (Tuesday) when it is put forward for a third reading.

That is likely to be a smoother debate for Chief Minister Quayle than the close scrutiny of last week’s clauses stage.

That saw clashes over the power the Council of Ministers will be given to retain EU legislation after Brexit. Concern has been expressed because will be able to do this via Tynwald orders, which can be dealt with at a single sitting, rather than putting legislation through the branches of Tynwald. Some MHKs felt this risked a lack of scrutiny.

The government managed last week to stave off an attempt to introduce a ’sunset clause’, whereby any EU laws retained under the provisions of the bill would fall by the wayside if they were not re-approved by Tynwald five years down the line - but only after a compromise amendment was suggested by backbencher Tim Baker (Ayre and Michael), which guaranteed that the prescribed review of retained legislation would have to be subject to a Tynwald debate.

Embarrassingly for the government, at one stage Mr Quayle argued the government, guaranteed a debate on that review, only for it to be pointed out to him that it did not.

Lawrie Hooper (LibVannin, Ramsey), who was behind the bid to introduce a sunset clause, also made an unsuccessful attempt to change the wording of another provision.

The Bill gives the Council of Ministers the power to ’make such provision as it considers appropriate’ to ’mitigate’ against the failure of the EU law or any other ’deficiency’ arising from Brexit.

Mr Hooper wanted to replace the word ’appropriate’ with ’necessary’.

He said that ’appropriate’ had been chosen because it was ’less litigable’ than the word ’necessary’, and would give the government more flexibility

But Mr Hooper referenced a finding by the House of Lords constitution committee that found that ’"appropriate" is subjective and inappropriately wide’.

Mr Hooper said that was highlighted when coupled with the use of the word ’mitigate’ in the Brexit Bill.

He said: ’Leaving the word "appropriate" in actually opens the door to changing all sorts of laws, all sorts of provisions in other Manx legislation around that: "We are mitigating the effects of Brexit, we are mitigating a flaw, we think that the current laws we have are not quite right and we need to change them."’

By changing to ’necessary’, it would put the onus on the government to demonstrate something needed to be done, rather than on Tynwald to react to a government action by demonstrating it should not be done.

Earlier, in seeking approval for that particular power, Mr Quayle said: ’The power in this clause can only be used to deal with deficiencies arising from the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, and there are a number of restrictions on the use of this power.’

MHKs voted 16-7 against Mr Hooper’s amendment.

If the Bill is granted a third reading, it will move on to the Legislative Council for further scrutiny.