I am sorry to press the noble Lord on this, but I remind him that paragraph 18 of the impact assessment states:
“In the current consultation … an attempt has not been made to monetise any of the costs and benefits associated with the policy”.
This is an alarming point. If this is going to be standard practice for the department, what is the department there for? These are not major changes. I accept the Minister’s point that everybody seems to welcome them, but some evaluation of what they cost and of the benefits would have been helpful. The impact assessment goes on to state:
“The intention is to utilise the consultation period as an opportunity to obtain further information from stakeholders”.
However the report from the consultation states that it was not possible to obtain any information on costs or benefits from the consultation. One has to ask: what sort of consultation was that?