My Lords, I was not able to take part in the debate yesterday. I must say that I find the discussion on this amendment slightly bewildering.
If the Bill said “2017”, would we be having a different debate or would be saying, “It has to be 2017 because we need that long”? I do not know, but I have the impression that when officials were drafting this, they would have said, “What date shall we put in? Let’s play safe and make sure we have enough time”, and so 2016 arrived. Was it a result of a lengthy period of consideration and working out what has to be done or was it simply the officials—I do not blame them—saying, “Let’s play safe, let’s have a date that is going to be okay”?
I understand the difficulty and we do not want to do something so rushed that we have botched legislation, and there is a danger of that. But I do not know from the outside just how long it would need. I just fear that we have a longer period of time than is necessary. I am not sure what it should be. Clearly, the work can start tomorrow on this, can it not? There is no reason why not. That would give 18 months; if that is not long enough, then two and a half years. I would have thought that the time to get on with it would be very soon. Frankly, I am not sure so I am still agnostic on the date.
I wish the amendment said that the provisions will be repealed “not later than 31 December”, then the Minister could say that he will do his best to make it earlier. As it is, we are stuck with a date that is immovable.