Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Exemption) (Amendment No. 2) Order 2011

My Lords, I really do not accept the construction of the noble Lord, Lord Myners, over this. If the previous Government had not published a rather confused consultation in March 2010, which slipped in a question that they said in the introduction to that consultation was already decided policy, none of this confusion and this opportunity to create some great mountain out of a procedural molehill would have arisen. We had a vigorous debate. We looked at all the key matters in Grand Committee in the proper way—all the matters I expected to be raised were properly covered in the discussion. A sequence of statutory instruments is due to come forward in the coming month. We needed this one out of the way. There is another consultation, as I have already explained, which closed last week that will inform the other statutory instruments. They will come forward under the normal procedure that is appropriate to them. An enormous amount is being made of next to nothing. If I had been aware of the confusion that had been laid in the previous Government’s consultation on this, of course I would have ensured that the responses were out. I regret they were not. Nothing was held back. Motion agreed.