Animal Welfare Bill

My Lords, I shall ignore that remark. We intend to set up a working group before the end of the year, with the objective of producing the code in 2008. We hope that these two pieces of work— the working group and the work from the Farm Animal Welfare Council—will inform the overall code to your Lordships’ satisfaction. We do not want to pre-empt it. I realise that the amendment has two parts—but the thing that kills the amendment off is the prescriptive detail of the timetable, which would completely wreck what we propose to do with the necessary outside interests to bring matters to a satisfactory conclusion.