My Lords, having been critical of what I am afraid I referred to as persiflage in an earlier amendment, I draw my noble friend’s attention to the importance of this set of amendments. They are not here, as I understand it, to lay extra burdens on anybody or to make generalised statements about good will and family life. In fact, they are designed very purposely to ask the Government to be very clear about this issue.
I say to my noble friend that it is important for the Government to be very clear about this position, because there are a number of other areas in which the Government have not been clear and where we are now in some difficulty. Of course I would not be out of order were I to speak to the question of caste at any length, but there is no doubt that there are a series of issues where lack of clarity has led people to be concerned as to where the Government stand. I am not concerned about that, because I am quite sure that the Government stand in the right place—you could not expect me to sit on this side of the Room if I did not think that. However, there are those who are not entirely sure, and this would be a good opportunity to give them the assurance that they need, not only for the high-minded view that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, put forward and which she is perfectly right to raise, on the standing within the international community, but also for a rather boring local reason. That is that one of the problems of red tape, as I said, is the perception of it, and one of the other problems is the misunderstanding, and not knowing where it is.
I do not like the term “deregulation” much, as it presupposes that the answer in all questions is not to have regulation, while in my view we have to try to look for good regulation. That is what Governments of all parties mean, when they are sensible, whatever they say outside. One of the ways we can have good regulation is, first of all, to have clear regulation—people know where they are. That is why I am so keen on not having too much of it, not because I do not want regulation, but simply because the more you have of it, the less people are clear and the less they know what they should be doing. In this particular case, clarity seems crucially important.
Although this is clearly a probing amendment that is meant to try to make sure that the Government say what they think and, if it is necessary to put that in the Bill or change one of the clauses in such a way as to make that explanation certain, I am sure that the Government will find a way to do that. I wanted to emphasise that this seems to be a totally different kind of discussion from the one that I rather light-heartedly drew attention to earlier on—I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, if he felt that I had been unfair about what he said. However, on this occasion it is important that there should be absolute clarity.