My Lords, I must say, I find the utilities section of this quite confusing in some areas. The more clarification we can get from the Minister, the better. It is not just this bit; it is the fact that it is cross-referenced a lot right across the Bill and is impacted by so many other pieces of legislation, including internationally.
We talked with officials about the Australia trade agreement this morning; the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, raised this. I am still slightly confused as to how that all links together. Rather sadly, after the discussion, I went and found the relevant parts and read them. The Bill talks about universal service obligations, postal monopolies, exclusive suppliers and specified collection, transport and delivery services. I know that the Minister is not able to come back to us on this now but I would appreciate some kind of written explanation of how this all works together and what the implications are of having that kind of reference to postal services in a trade agreement. What impact does that have on future procurement legislation? Will the Procurement Bill have an impact on future trade agreements in this area? Personally, I find this quite confusing; it would be extremely helpful to have it laid out in a crystal-clear fashion so that we do not end up with this kind of confusion and the debates we are having.
I will not repeat all the things that noble Lords said when they talked about having more clarification on Schedule 2. I will just briefly come back to cross-referencing throughout the Bill. In the previous debate, we talked about the committee report, which again mentions Schedule 4, the utility activities exposed to competition, the provisions of the WTO agreement—the GPA—and so on. For me, a lot of this is about having a clear understanding of which utilities lie in this group and which lie in that group; which utilities will have to follow certain rules; which will be exempt; and how they will be exempt. I would appreciate proper clarification on all those areas because this is a lot to take in; a lot of it needs to be right as well.
I appreciate that I have asked the Minister to do quite a complicated task but, in Committee and certainly ahead of Report, that sort of information and clarification would be extremely helpful.