My Lords, I am grateful for the noble Lord’s forbearance with my amendment. I have some slightly difficult personal circumstances which mean that I have not been able to prepare quite as well as I would like, and therefore I shall not speak to my Amendment 18.
If these two proposed new subsections to affect the main clauses in the Bill were part of the wider quinquennial Armed Forces Bill, would we look at them in such great detail? I think that if we are honest, we would say probably not. I can understand the thinking of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in recommending the affirmative procedure. The committee rightly recognises that your Lordships will want to look closely at the detail. However, as drafted I believe that even the most minor amendment in the future would have to be debated by both Houses, and I am not convinced that that would be a good use of parliamentary time. Worse still, a situation may arise where some minor change is desirable but the change is delayed, or even worse not made at all, because of the effort required. Noble Lords should be aware that putting an affirmative order through Parliament is not an exercise in rubber stamping; it is a complicated process. Would it not be better to use the affirmative procedure for the first set of regulations and then revert to the negative procedure for subsequent amendments? I wonder whether the noble Lord would like to consider that.