Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

That is certainly helpful, and I hope that the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, is satisfied with that reply. Regarding the intervention from the right reverend Prelate, I, too, read what was said by Church Communities UK, and he quoted an extremely valid example. That individual, who came into the United Kingdom to assist them with overseas programmes, had specialist knowledge of the Thai language and customs and spent a good deal of the first year, as I remember it, outside the country. He was all right, however, because his average was still less than the 90 days. The rigidity of the 90 days will discourage that sort of activity, and although I heard the Minister’s answer to my noble friend, I would like him to assure me that that discretion can be found in the Bill. I did not notice it, and neither did my noble friend, so it would also be extremely helpful if the Minister can point us toward the clause that confers the discretion he has mentioned on the Secretary of State. Until we see the guidance that the Minister said would be forthcoming, we really do not know whether his answer is satisfactory. The reasons why people may have to take advantage of the discretion are manifold; we hope that it will be sufficiently flexible to cover every circumstance that we, from previous experience, know that people may invoke. It is frequently the case with this Bill that we are told guidance is coming along later, but we have no means of really getting our teeth into what is proposed because there is no idea of the nature of that guidance, or of how it will operate in practice. I am disappointed by what the Minister said in answer to Amendment 47, because there are circumstances—I quoted an example—where a person’s qualifying residence would be interrupted by a perfectly legal stay in the country which was not qualifying. I do not see why that should be excluded by the calculation and why somebody should have to start again from scratch. By definition, if it is a lawful stay in the country, it is contributing to that person’s integration. We were asking not that it should be counted, but only that the periods before and after should be aggregated in a calculation. That seemed a very modest demand which I am surprised the Minister has had to reject. However, I confess again that we are not hopeful of getting any further at this stage, so perhaps we shall defer our pleasure until Report and see whether we can get any further advance out of the Minister. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 47 withdrawn.