However, I can assure noble Lords that that is not how I operate. I am looking forward to lengthy discussions this afternoon.
I thank my noble friend Lord Trenchard for his Amendment 17, with which I will take Amendments 18, 23 and 29 in the name of my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising. I agree that we would gain little from a committee that devotes its energies to reopening old debates. We want a committee that improves the policy decision-making and implementation process now and in future.
However, policy is not a static thing. This afternoon, we have heard descriptions of policies that go back centuries. Policy is always being reassessed, reinterpreted and, above all, implemented. It would be difficult to pin down a working definition of established policy,
particularly in statute, that does not shut the committee out of a number of areas where its scrutiny would be most valuable.
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I remind your Lordships that the committee has a very specific role, which is to publish reports on the policies it has reviewed, giving its assessment of the ways in which they might have an adverse effect on animal welfare. Expert scrutiny of this sort is vital to good policy-making, particularly in areas such as animal sentience, where our specific knowledge is advancing rapidly.
While I am sympathetic to some of the beliefs and concerns of certain noble Lords here today, I affirm that it is for Ministers to make and account for individual policy decisions and not the committee. We simply do not have to worry that, one day, the committee will demand that we tear up a piece of legislation. It has no powers to do so, and this is simply not what it is there to do.
I would not want to prevent the committee identifying potential improvements in the implementation of existing policy, nor would I want to prevent it learning and sharing lessons from the recent past. A good driver pays a lot of attention to the road ahead, but he also needs a rear-view mirror.
I say in specific response to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, that this Bill is about the government policy-making process. It is not about some method of changing the slaughter of animals for religious belief. I want to make that absolutely clear.
With these assurances in mind, I hope my noble friends will feel content not to press their amendments.