I am grateful to the Minister. I have listened to this for about an hour and he keeps using the same arguments. We are going to come to these issues again on the second SI. If I give him some notice, he may be able to think of some better arguments than those he has used so far. I find it almost impossible to understand what he is saying. If there has been no proper consultation with the industry, how can he say that this has minimal impact on it? That seems to be a contradiction in terms. What is the basis of the Minister’s impact assessment if there has been no formal consultation?
I come back to the point I raised earlier: were not the hands of the civil servants tied, in terms of their ability to talk to people about these issues, before this SI was formulated—a straight yes or no? Were they constrained in their discussions with the affected industries before these SIs were drawn up?