We now know that a Liberal Democrat nod really means a shake of the head. The right hon. Gentleman said that he was going to tell us how many organisations would be caught by the Bill, but now he says that the other Minister will answer my question. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West referred to albatrosses earlier. As I recall, in Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” the mariner shoots the albatross, which then hung around the mariner’s neck until all the people involved on the ship had died. I fear for the Parliamentary Secretary. I fear that, charming and wonderful as she is, this Bill will be hanging around her neck, and the necks of several other Members, until they have all passed on, politically at least.
Let me say this to the Minister. The reason many people will choose to opt out of the voluntary register on which they are listed at present is that there will now suddenly be a mandatory register to which only a tiny proportion of people will be required to sign up. Until the Government are prepared to say what proportion—