My Lords, I will not take very long. I do not have the remotest idea what the Minister is going to say. Whether or not she finds what I say encouraging remains to be seen.
I have a concern about the amendment. I find it very difficult to believe that there has not been an increasing awareness of this problem over the past 15 or 20 years—indeed, almost a crescendo, rising nowadays to virtually a scream—on just this subject. It has been there all the time. Now we are talking about putting in another body that would be publishing its advice in public and so on. In the end, though, only one thing will matter and that is decision. No one has suggested anything that will take the decision away from the relevant Ministers. They have to face that fact.
If this were happening in the commercial world, a good many people in this field would have lost their jobs long ago. Unfortunately, that does not happen to Ministers. Still, that is what is going to have to happen. In the end, the Ministers in the department will have to make their minds up.
I have almost got to the point where I do not care what they decide so long as they decide something. If they make a wrong decision you can do something about it, but the one thing you can never do anything about is no decision at all—it is impossible—and that is what we have been forced to live with for a very long time.