My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing these amendments. We are broadly happy with the majority of them. I have just a couple of points concerning the territorial issues he talked about in relation to the royal charter, which may have eluded me. I am sure that he will be able to put me right.
As I understand it, the royal charter will operate across the whole of the United Kingdom but the intention of government Amendment 12 is to restrict the effect of the entrenchment clause—which was passed in this House on Monday—to England and Wales. However, if it is subsequently decided that the measures should be enacted for Scotland and Northern Ireland, what are the Government’s intentions? I think the Minister said that he expected that these discussions would be concluded by the time we were in receipt of any comments that the House of Commons might want to make on the Bill. If my arithmetic is correct, that is only three or four weeks away so we are putting rather a tight timetable on it. In the unlikely event that these discussions continue beyond that date, can the Minister speculate on how it would be possible to amend the Bill once it has received Royal Assent, or does he have other plans that would allow us to take that forward?
My second point is a rather narrow one. We are dealing with royal charters and therefore the territories to which they apply. While Her Majesty has been gracious in allowing her prerogatives on this point to be surrendered to Parliament, what happens to other territories, such as the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, where the royal charter will clearly have effect but the clause of the Bill will not run because it is limited to England and Wales specifically?
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