Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply; unfortunately, most of the questions still remain. It may be that until the design group has reported or come to its final conclusions those questions are going to hang about, because they are absolutely germane to how this activity requirement will work. One area which was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, and which I touched on, is important for the Government to take on board. Who is going to pay the voluntary organisations for helping to undertake this work? The volunteers by definition may very well need volunteer expenses, such as childcare, travel and so on. That needs to be taken into account and cannot just be slid over. The worry about this is that the Government issued a question and answer document, and this expenses question was not part of it. It is something that needs to be picked up. Of course, it is not compulsory, but in reality it is compulsory. Who is going to want to do another two years’ worth of trying to become citizen when they can cut corners and get in a couple of years sooner by doing this voluntary activity? It is as near compulsory as makes no matter. It is quite a burden on the voluntary sector, and there is a lot more to be worked out. I understood the Minister saying that the design group recommendations will be a statutory instrument and will come to both Houses for affirmative resolution. The Minister nods, so we can have that on the record. That will be something, and we will have another chance. The Minister has made a lot of promises to write to us with responses, but Third Reading now has such strict rules that we are not going to be able to make use of the information that we get. It would have been helpful to have had it in advance. This has been an important debate. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, and other noble Lords for their contributions and I thank those who were present at the meeting with Volunteering England who took on board the concerns which have already been raised with the design group. Those concerns did not arrive through a backdoor as they had already been raised. For today, and probably for the rest of the Bill, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 35 withdrawn. Amendment 36 not moved.