My Lords, I move Amendment 8 simply because I believe two things. First, we cannot contemplate a situation where there are not enough permits. If we have a permit system, we must negotiate a position where there are sufficient. That is the principal reason for my moving the amendment: to emphasise that point, to allow people to speak to it and for some of the passion of last night to come through on the back of it.
If there is a limit, it is unthinkable that it should be a matter of random allocation or “first come, first served”. How do you build the future of your business, which is to a degree capital intensive, while depending on employing staff to line up at some government office with sleeping bags to sleep overnight to be first in the queue as if it is Wimbledon, or plan your investments on the basis of how their names might come out of some hat? First, we should not contemplate a limit on the number of permits; secondly, I cannot believe that these words were put in a Bill, as it cannot be a serious suggestion to this extraordinarily important industry that it would be required to behave like that to carry on trading. I beg to move.