I am grateful to the noble Lord for making that clear. However, perhaps I may also make it clear to him that the time we have available is down to the Government. It is not because of some extra-terrestrial force that has been at work; it is because of the Government that we are operating within these confines. It is therefore absolutely appropriate that noble Lords who do not accept that we should be in this straitjacket in the first place do not accept for a moment the point that the noble Lord has just made—that dispensing with normal parliamentary and government procedures in respect of consultation is satisfactory because we are limited for time.
8.15 pm
The situation that we are in at the moment is deeply unsatisfactory. We are imposing significant burdens on companies—burdens that extend to millions of pounds according to the Government’s own impact assessment, which they themselves admit is conservative. We are doing so in pursuit of a no-deal Brexit, which almost nobody who has been engaged with it—to use the noble Lord’s expression—finds satisfactory and almost all of whom would wish to rescind if they were given the opportunity. There has been no consultation in defiance of all the established rules of the Government and Parliament. This is unsatisfactory and therefore I beg to move.