My Lords, that was a suitable start to my own small intervention. I will not trouble the Minister for too long but I want to strike a note of genuine regret, rather along the lines of what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said.
It is a very small crumb of comfort to be faced with this order when previously, right across the EU, there were no roaming charges for consumers. As we saw, last July the EU extended the exemption from roaming charges for another 10 years—an extensive period. I suspect we are all now much more aware of what we have lost as a result of leaving the EU, exactly as the noble Lord mentioned.
There is a small consolation offered in this free trade agreement. I do not know whether any negotiations will ever be underfoot again with the EU about taking advantage of its single market and the resulting lack of roaming charges. Maybe the Minister could say whether any kind of initiative was available.
I have only a couple of questions about these new regulations. The Minister talked about the technicalities of wholesale, retail and so on. Obviously, the retail charges—if any—follow from any wholesale charges. How are these charges to be set? What is the basis for them? Norway and Iceland are limited exemptions. Even Liechtenstein did not feel moved enough to join up to this great roaming exemption. Why has Liechtenstein excluded itself from this splendid initiative?
Of course, we support these regulations. I welcome particularly that there is a review. I am greatly in favour of government reviewing its own regulations, and the mechanism in Regulation 13 is very useful, but what does the Minister envisage? Do we do this after a couple of years, after five years, this time next year or never? What is the plan? It is useful at least to have in the department’s diary something that says, “Review these Norway and Iceland regulations”, when somebody has the spare time to do it. I hope that consumers will take great benefit from these regulations.