I will be extremely brief, as the Minister has dealt with most of the points that arose from the amendments. There is a nagging feeling that what we are going to approve now is not what the House of Commons actually wanted. The fact is that—surprisingly, at this stage of a Parliament—the Commons defeated the Government on a fairly basic principle with regard to this Bill.
At Second Reading, the Minister accepted on the part of the Government the will of the Commons and said, basically, that the Government would adopt the principles that the Commons had advocated with regard to pub codes and publicans. With respect, that is not what we are getting today; what we thought was there in the Bill has now become a consultative period and what will amount to secondary legislation. I put it to the Minister, and to the Committee at large, that at this stage of this Parliament what we are doing is not what the Commons wanted us to. I can see that questions will be asked at that end of the building about our procedures here.
We have only a short time before the general election on 7 May, after which there will be a new Government, of whatever political hue or hues. That will mean there is a considerable amount of time before consideration takes place and the Minister’s undertakings to the Committee today are brought into force. I put it to the Minister that before Report we should look again at the two Clause 42s, the old one and the new, and see if there are parts of the old one that really ought to be incorporated into the new one, if only to ease the feeling outside this place that whatever happens over the next year or 14 months will water down the agreements that we thought had been reached as a result of the Commons decision. It is unusual, to say the least, that a Government should be defeated on something like this.
I address my closing remarks to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, in particular: he should not think that the decision was arrived at because of pressure from CAMRA or any other body. I think that many Conservative Members of the other place looked at what was happening to their own local in their own town or village and decided that that was why they felt Greg Mulholland’s amendment ought to be accepted. I hope I can get some assurances from the Minister that there will be some discussions with other people before Report so that we can see some of the watering down that we perceive in the difference between the two Clause 42s being rectified.