My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, is the most diligent of parliamentarians. If he has not been able to read the impact assessment from start to finish, that illustrates that we have problems in achieving satisfactory scrutiny of legislation.
I support Amendments 28H, 28J and 28JA because I agree with noble Lords who have already argued that it is important that we should look at the relevant statutory instruments one by one, in so far as that is realistic and practical.
I believe that it is realistic and practical for Parliament. There may be problems in that, as has already been suggested, the material contained within different statutory instruments may overlap with other statutory instruments to a degree, in which case one must proceed pragmatically. But it is right in principle that Parliament should have the maximum opportunity to examine secondary legislation. One could say that the more minimalist the primary legislation the more important it is to ensure that the secondary legislation that stems from it is thoroughly scrutinised.
We can be a little too defeatist in Parliament about the scope for satisfactory scrutiny of statutory instruments. When I was in the House of Commons, time was all too limited for examining SIs. As a self-regulating House, we are better placed to ensure that we examine statutory instruments more thoroughly in this House. We have committees of the House that take it upon themselves to do a lot of preliminary work on our behalf. There is a disposition and a considerable ability in your Lordships' House to do this job properly.
We cannot overstate the importance of some of this secondary legislation. The creation of new exceptions to copyright law can have a major bearing on the livelihoods of large numbers of people and on the performance of significant sectors of our economy. We owe it to the public whom we serve that we take the greatest care to ensure that these exceptions are properly formulated.
The presumption should be that each one is embodied in a separate statutory instrument and carries with it a separate impact assessment, which I hope will then be on a scale that the Minister and all the rest of us would be able to manage. I hope that the Minister will be able to give a full and formal assurance that this will be the approach of the Government.