It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), and we often agree on these points more than we disagree. I was not going to begin by referring to amendment 101, but following his speech, let me address it with one or two short remarks. His argument is that we should vote for amendment 101 because it sends a signal by introducing the primary purpose test. He invites us to vote for that, knowing that if it is successful it could be put right with a better form of words at a later stage. He asks us to support the symbol rather than any particular words, a concept with which I am familiar and to which I often agree in legislation.
I have a much more significant problem with amendment 101, however, in that it introduces something that worries me greatly in legislation—that is, a subjective as opposed to an objective test. I have been involved in various bits of legislation, many of them rather dry and sometimes technical, such as the creation of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, where we have sought to introduce tests that get certain things done. Whenever one is tempted to introduce a test that is not purely objective and does not have objective criteria, one comes up against all sorts of difficulties. Although I have a lot of sympathy with the concept, I could not support this amendment because, for me, it crosses a major legislative Rubicon between the objective test and the subjective test.