I want to raise one or two points about what the Minister said. The response we have had from the Government is basically a repetition of what has been said in three letters from the same Minister, one of which I understand followed a meeting with the chairman of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. I find it rather puzzling that the Government or the Home Office do not think it rather odd that, if their case is so persuasive and that in effect there has been no real change at all, they have been unable to persuade the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee of that fact. Why does the Minister think that is the case? Could it not be that the Home Office has got it wrong and that it has been making changes?
I noticed in her reply at one stage the Minister said, “We have made some changes”. Did the Home Office ever think that maybe it is wrong and that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee is right? If we are at a stage where, after a report like this from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, the Minister in the department concerned is still prepared to stand at the Dispatch Box when challenged and say, in effect, the scrutiny committee has it wrong and we have it right, it makes you wonder what kind of esteem the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee is held in by the Home Office.
I wonder if the Home Office is seeking to make any arrangements to offer to meet the committee to talk through this issue of whether there have been significant changes or not, and as to whether the committee is justified in the really quite serious criticism that it has made. I have not heard anything from the Minister to suggest that the department is willing to offer to discuss this with the committee as a whole.
6.15 pm
The other point I would like to make is that the noble Baroness has said that it would have been better if the guidance had been available at the same time, but that does not answer the question of why it was not available. If the Government had found out that they could not produce the guidance, why not delay the introduction of the order? I have not had an answer to the question of why the guidance was issued only on the date the regulations came in. There has been no answer to that question at all. I simply ask it again: why was the guidance left so that it came out only on the day that the regulations were brought into force?
On the argument, what I quoted in my contribution were for the most part the views of the committee. It was the committee which said that ideally these definitions should be set out in the regulations. The Government’s answer, as I understand it, is that it would have made the regulations enormously long. Is the Minister able to give some indication of how mammoth the regulations would actually be if the definitions were spelt out rather than being left to guidance—guidance that does not even appear until the day the regulations come into force?
I would be grateful for a response to these points. I would be very grateful if I could have that response now, but I am not going to press the regret Motion—let me make that quite clear. If the Minister would rather do this in subsequent correspondence, I accept that. However, some answers are needed. This is about the relationship between the Home Office and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. To my mind, the committee has made a pretty powerful case for saying that the Home Office has not acted in an appropriate manner in relation to these regulations.