I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to what has turned out to be a short debate. I expected it to be fairly short, but some very valuable questions have been raised so I will be very pleased to answer as many as I can. If there is more that I can add then I will certainly write.
I turn first to the comments made by my noble friend Lady Byford. It is always a pleasure to have her in the Committee to make sure that we are doing things correctly, and she certainly does that. She referred to the issue of the Select Committee and the instrument being made affirmative. Without wishing to detract at all from the valuable work done by the Select Committee, it is the case that the functions being transferred across in this SI are administrative functions, not legislative. There was a potential slight misunderstanding about exactly which powers were coming across. Other legislative functions have come across in other SIs but not in this one. However, we took the decision that this gives us as a Government the opportunity to explain the position, so we decided that we would accept the Select Committee’s decision to make it affirmative, although there was always the opportunity for us to have gone back and explain that. We felt, “Why not make sure that everyone is completely happy?”, so we decided to stand in front of your Lordships today and explain that these are administrative functions, while
those legislative functions came across in other SIs that were affirmative anyway and have already been discussed by the Committee.
My noble friend also asked whether there were further statutory instruments to come. There are a few but not as many as there were, so that is a bonus. Nearly all of them have now been scheduled for debate, so we have a good idea of what is left. Obviously, we are consolidating where possible to ensure that we do not have too many debates. It is vital to ensure that our legislation is up to date for exit day, whenever that comes. We can certainly say that we are in the end game now; we are at the end of the process and we should have everything in place very soon. As my noble friend will know, there are more coming tomorrow, so I hope she will join us then.