Devolution (Time) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, on promoting this debate. As the sun streams through the windows, I thought that this would be rather a pleasant little outing. However, having listened to the debate, I have decided that George Gershwin got it nearly right. I shall paraphrase his words: ““It’s summer time, and the decision ain’t easy””. My apologies to Gershwin. I must admit that, if the Bill were to go through, I do not feel that it would be a slippery slope, but I suspect that it would face a number of difficulties. The case was very well presented by the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw. I liked his use of the phrase ““celestial mechanics””. I had not thought of the issue in that way. He is right to say that the poll taken in Scotland a while ago by the Lighter Later campaign found that a majority of people were in favour of change. I must admit that I was somewhat surprised when the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said that there is not much evidence on the question of child safety. I thought that all the studies have shown the opposite. I can understand that if one is opposed even to the possibility of change, but I did think the arguments were getting a bit threadbare when we were told to worry about the impact on BlackBerrys. I can think of a whole range of things, but that—