My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response, which at least confirmed my prophetic abilities and had quite a bit of encouragement. I confirm that we are working on a letter to him along the lines that he described, and we will get that to him in due course—that is a bit pessimistic; we should say “shortly”. I thank him for the other comments that he has made, which I will study and act upon.
I was absolutely delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, was able to contribute to the debate. As she said, she was the Minister responsible when I first accidently got involved with retentions in 2015. For a glorious moment, I thought that she might prove to be the dragon-slayer, but I am delighted that she continues to support the cause. The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, made a very important point about investment in training as well as the fact that government itself is not doing all that it could to bring this practice to an end.
As always, I depend heavily on the vast expertise of my noble friend Lord Lytton, whom I thank particularly for focusing on the impact on SMEs. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, also did so, again pointing out the issue of cash flow and its importance. Fortunately, my SME was never in the construction sector, so that is one problem that we did not have, although we certainly had plenty of cash-flow problems. Of course, I also thank the Minister.
Fixing this issue will be a key part of achieving the goal that the Minister is setting out to achieve: a productive, high-quality, collaborative, innovative, forward-looking and, above all, safe construction sector, providing the sorts of homes and other buildings that we can be truly proud of. I am not convinced that we should not come back to this issue on Report, but, for now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.