My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 14B in my name.
Amendment 9 is quite simple. It would require the Secretary of State to publish a report saying what is in any agreement that has been made on the allocation of permits for UK-registered vehicles to operate in the EU. I do not need to go into it in any more detail than that. We have had a good discussion about that this afternoon, and I am sure that the Minister will welcome this. She will probably say that she is going to do it anyway, and if she is not going to, she jolly well should. However, there is a reciprocal problem that we have not discussed so far—although my noble friend Lord Snape mentioned it—which is about EU lorries coming into the UK. Amendment 14B would allow the Government to make regulations to issue permits for non-UK registered vehicles to come into the UK. This would include vehicles, as I said earlier, from the Republic of Ireland.
Does the Minister agree that there is a need to issue such licences? I hope that she does, because otherwise, EU lorries will roam around the UK freely, doing exactly what they like, presumably doing cabotage for several months before they run out of fuel. It seems unfair, and I am sure that the European Union negotiators will accept that there has to be a reciprocal arrangement. Does the Minister envisage an allocation of permits to each member state, or will there be one lot of permits
to cover the whole 26 or so member states—apart from Ukraine and places like that, because they are not within the EU? If the answer is, “No, it is an EU one and that’s fine”, will the Republic of Ireland to be happy with that, and how will it get its allocation—will it be separate or together?
I can see from past experience that the French and Dutch Governments in particular may want more than their fair share, or more than what we may think is their fair share, so there is the question of how we would deal with that.
Lastly—I hardly dare go back to this question of first come, first served—but how will it be done? I cannot say much more than that, but I look forward to hearing what the Minister says. I beg to move.