My Lords, I am not sure that the Minister is procedurally correct to say that I have the first Amendment. She has the first Amendment in this group, which she can move at this point. Although mine is the first Amendment on Clause 42, it is not the first one on this group. If she is asking whether she has said enough for me to roll over in relation to her own amendments, the answer is probably, “Almost, but with great regret”.
She has said that she is prepared to talk to all the parts of the industry involved, and she has done that in a very generous way. However, when she went through this clause by clause, there seemed to be fairly clear opposition to all the areas of concern that had been expressed by me, the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, and my noble friends Lord Berkeley and Lord Snape. If she is prepared to say that all these things are open for discussion before we get to Report, I suppose that the sensible thing for me to do would be to say that I did not object to her clause. While I was clear on the conciliatory tone at the beginning, when it came to any individual item it seemed to be the firm position of the department to oppose it. However, it is not really my position to object at this point.