Environmental Noise (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2009

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have participated in this most interesting debate, which, because the regulations deal with a minor constitutional matter, looked as though it might involve excessively limited detail but which expanded, under the guidance of my noble friend Lord Rosser in his opening speech, into consideration of a real issue to which the Merits Committee has drawn attention. I pay all due respect to that committee for its work in this area and to the way in which my noble friend Lord Rosser has advanced its arguments and concerns in this debate this evening. I also congratulate all the other speakers, to whom I hope I will be able to give some satisfactory answers in a moment, on the way in which they expressed their concerns about these issues. I hope that their concerns can be allayed, because there were moments when I thought that perhaps Defra was being accused of the most extraordinary constitutional outrage of seeking to conceal for all time activities that should properly be the concern of Parliament and of a sleight of hand. I assure noble Lords that although the term "ambulatory" is new to many of us—I cannot pretend that I have been familiar with it in primary or subordinate legislation, any more than anyone else has been who has spoken in this debate; we have been obliged to learn it over the past few months—the issue of the ambulatory references does not carry quite the weight that it has been suggested it carries; they present no real constitutional difficulty. They do, however, need to be explained, and I very much want to elaborate on our response to the committee in a letter from my honourable friend the Agriculture Minister. I shall seek to allay concerns about the breadth of the reference in Defra’s proposal to amend the regulations. We are actually talking about a very narrow perspective indeed. In the Minister’s letter to the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, who chaired the committee, he said that we will amend the regulations to limit the ambulatory reference to the technical matters in the annexe to the directive. That is our clear and significant response to the committee’s concerns. The noble Lord, Lord Patten, referred to the guidance with great anxiety. The internal Defra guidance will be issued to ensure that Explanatory Memoranda explain the scope and impact of any ambulatory reference in more detail so that we are all clear about what exactly is being put forward under this framework. Why the concept of ambulatory references? It is extremely useful for the department. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, gave the classic parliamentary response when he said that the word "expedience" makes his parliamentary hair stand on end, but it is not a damaging word in itself. Governments need expedience and to follow expedient strategies. After all, we are talking only about efficiency, effectiveness, and therefore cost-effectiveness, in the work that is done. The power to make ambulatory references, which is useful, relates to the substantial amount of European legislation that Defra must inevitably implement.