Thank you very much to those who have contributed to this very good debate, which has been high-level and high-quality. I have particular thanks to those who signed up to my amendment. This will set us up well for the rest of Committee. We have already had more than 500 amendments tabled to the Bill and I gather that there are more to come. According to the Public Bill Office, this is the most amendments for any Bill in recent memory—although it then covered itself by saying that it had records going back only seven years, so there may be others. However, it is still quite a lot and a record.
I expected to have put myself up for an attack on my drafting and if you do that, you certainly set yourself up for it. I felt that while most people were
very fair to my efforts, there was a bit of an attempt to play the man and not the ball. I also felt that a red card was due to the noble Lord, Lord Myners, for grading me a lower second for offering a contribution to improve the quality of the Bill. The theme was an offer to the Government to try to work together on this issue, which has obviously caught the interest of the House. Among the 30 Back-Bench speakers and two Front-Bench speakers, I think there were only four or five who could claim to support fully where the Government are trying to get to. I am afraid that the Minister lost the House in his long and rather difficult-to-follow explanation of why he wanted to refuse our generous offer to work with him to improve a statement that would enhance the Bill. I hope that people will remember that as we go forward into other issues.
We clearly have different visions about how to proceed. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave, and to some extent, rather surprisingly, with the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, that the way forward is perhaps not to push this too hard at this stage because there is an opportunity to improve it later on, if the Government will play ball. But if the Government do not play ball, where are you? You are stuck. In this situation, it is therefore right that we take up the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury: we should take the courage of the conviction of those who spoke today, move forward with this amendment and, if necessary, amend around the Bill to improve any infelicities that there may be in the current drafting.
The major point made by the noble Viscount when he came to respond was that we would be placing burdens on universities by the form of the drafting. That point was explicitly refuted by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, and picked up by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Browne of Eaton-under-Heywood, who said that it was not the case. The Minister has no argument for not accepting this proposal. As he will not, I wish to test the views of the House.