Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

As I said earlier, I have some sympathy with the views of the authors of those amendments, which provide a more clinical way of dealing with this issue. However, it seemed to me appropriate at least to explore this idea and to invite comments from the Minister, in order to help inform our proceedings. I understand where the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Knight) is coming from, but I have yet to hear the Minister explain why the veto was drafted in this way, rather than according to the right hon. Gentleman’s understanding, which is based on evidence given to his Committee. I turn to the amendments standing in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Alison Seabeck) relating to the two-year rule. Essentially, they are probing amendments that seek to discover what will happen when a Minister is hell-bent on introducing an order, despite opposition from a Committee of the House. Clause 16, which deals with the super-affirmative resolution procedure, clearly sets out the reporting procedure. There are mechanisms that enable Ministers to tweak and amend an order in the light of discussions with Committees of both Houses, and with public bodies and individuals. So what starts as a draft order is not necessarily the final text. It may be amended or qualified in writing, or the body or organisation for which it is promulgated may make appropriate assurances. Yesterday, I gave the example of the assurance given to both Houses by the chairman of the Forestry Commission that satisfied the concerns expressed by my Committee. Those possibilities are available in the tweaking process, but what happens if the Minister says that he will keep coming back even though the Committee does not like what he says? First, the parliamentary business managers would not be terribly enamoured of that and the Minister would not survive for long without being ridiculed for trying to repeat the same mistake over and over again—