My Lords, I have only just learned that if we do not pass the government amendments in this group, we put at risk the required legislative consent order for Northern Ireland. I had intended to oppose Amendments 2, 7 and 14; I did not understand why Amendment 2 was necessary or had any real force or meaning—in any case, I much preferred Amendment 5 —and Amendment 7 seemed downright confusing, since its net effect is to impose an obligation on the Minister to have regard to certain things when considering making regulations but no obligation to consider the specified things when actually making these regulations.
I have spoken to the Minister and will now not oppose the government amendments. However, I feel that we have been bounced. I first realised the Government’s intention to move when I read today’s Chair’s guidance and I understood that there was a Northern Ireland problem when I was given, about 40 minutes ago, a copy of the note from the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, from yesterday. We were not copied in on that note. I strongly feel that this is all very unsatisfactory.
The Minister has not really answered the question that I asked him in our impromptu interval of why we need to rush. Could he explain why delaying the start of the legislative consent order process until Report would be a problem? It is still not clear to me. I trust the Minister’s assessment but I do not understand how he arrived at it. In his note to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, he says, for example, that the delay would mean that we could not meet some unspecified timing objective but he prays in aid the notion that the minimum interval between Committee and Report is a contributing factor. We can change that interval; we could choose. Could the Minister explain again why it is necessary to do this today?