My Lords, I want to make a couple of points that I have made on previous occasions. I am always unhappy about things that deal with the law being discussed only by lawyers. It seems to me that non-lawyers should sometimes refer to the matters in front of us.
I heard the Minister say, kindly, that we now have the impact assessment. I am always fascinated by how the Government can say that they do not intend to provide guidance because a measure relates mainly to technical changes before they have produced the impact assessment. That seems like a decision before the fact. It is also interesting that the Explanatory Memorandum states:
“No, or no significant, impact on the private, voluntary or public sector is foreseen … The impact of this instrument, including on individuals, is negligible”.
That cannot be true if, for example, this information is not available; the noble and learned Lord made the point a moment ago that that will have a considerable impact on individuals.
The point I really want to make to the Minister is that this is another example of trying to deal with Alice in Wonderland. The idea that we would seriously not give the information we have to the rest of the European Union, nor hope that they would give us that information, seems outwith any kind of sense. I am perfectly prepared to accept that we will have to pass these regulations—because, no doubt, if that situation arose when we are not a member of the European Union, many of these provisions would not function in any case—but I wish that Ministers would just admit every time that it is much better to have a system in which you share than not. We are all fixated by the lunacy of the whole business of Brexit but that does not mean that a little humility from Ministers would not be welcome. They could say, “We are sorry to be in this position because it makes things very much worse”, instead of pretending that everything will be the same, that we will just fix things, that everything is perfectly okay and that if we have a no-deal situation, this will just go ahead. That flies in the face of the truth.
Every time we discuss these statutory instruments, we increasingly recognise what a nonsense the whole proposition is. I just want to hear that occasionally from the Government. They do not seem satisfactorily engaged in trying to solve the problem anyway, but it would be nice to hear an occasional ministerial comment that they are sorry to have to put this forward because it is obviously not a sensible situation or better than what we have at the moment.