Intellectual Property Bill [HL]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Young, has encapsulated the argument pretty well. It merely takes a reading of the report from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee to see that, although on slightly different bases and for rather different reasons, it is not happy at all with negative procedure for either Clause 8 or Clause 11. In addition to the amendments tabled between us, I have some sympathy with Amendment 10 as well. I very much hope that the Minister will be able to give either convincing reasons for continuing with the negative procedure or will accept the fact that the committee has delivered a pretty strong opinion, particularly in terms of being able to amend primary legislation, and that therefore he will accept or put forward his own amendments to change it to the affirmative procedure in the case of both clauses. Simply reading the committee’s report is pretty persuasive by itself.