Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

I am grateful to the Minister for his undertakings. I am also grateful to noble Lords on all sides for their broad support for these measures. It was an omission on my part not to have included the point raised by noble Lord, Lord Hain: I should, on reflection, have included that, but I appreciate that the Minister has given us an undertaking. On the basis of what the Minister has promised, I know it will require a lot of work over the next number of weeks—that is the challenge—but at the end of the day I think it will be useful work. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, that by proposing and preparing reports we will ensure that, in the event that the Assembly returns, it will have something to work with. Because, let us be honest, the Minister’s department does not, on its own, have the capacity to deal with all this: it will have to rely heavily on the Civil Service in Belfast, which does know and is dealing with this on a daily basis, to have input into the reports. That information could be very useful to an incoming Assembly and incoming Ministers in the relevant departments. So procedurally, if he is going to do this, I am happy to accept his assurance and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.