My Lords, I hope that the Minister will be able to write to all noble Lords on the Committee between now and then with a number of answers. Have the Government examined the Canadian experience and looked at why the Canadians abolished their category? Have we considered the same? Can the Government explain why they accepted all of the Migration Advisory Committee’s proposals on tier 2 for the immigration skills charge, but did not accept two rather important proposals from the Migration Advisory Committee that there should be a limited number of sealed bids and a substantial donation to a good causes fund as part of the conditions?
I admit that the origins of my interest in this are from when I went as a representative of Her Majesty’s Government to the capital of a former Soviet state and found myself talking with someone who was clearly very much part of the oligarchy running the country. He told me that he had just been appointed ambassador to Britain and this was rather difficult for him because at that moment he held British citizenship as well as citizenship of his state. He was going to have to come back to his own country for some weeks while this was sorted out, but he had recently bought his son the house next door to his in Chelsea and as his son was rather young he did not want to leave him on his own for so long, so he was not quite sure how he was going to manage it. I began to think it was a little odd. I decided in my two days in that country that it was not a particularly democratic one and the distribution of wealth was clearly in the hands of a very small number of people, although one or two of them offered me some extremely generous gifts, which I, of course, had to pass on. It opened my eyes to something not desirable, not in the interests of this country and not contributing to our economy.
I would have been much happier if the figures I had discovered on tier 1 had shown that the exceptional talent category had 2,000 to 3,000 people in it, the entrepreneur category 3,000 to 4,000 people and the investor category, 50. That is the sort of thing we should have if we believe the Prime Minister in his commitment to attract the brightest and the best. We have got it the wrong way round at present. I wish the coalition Government had been able to push a little further in that respect, but we will make up for it. We will do our best to push the Minister and see how far we can go. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.