My Lords, I apologise for not having been present for the first two days in Committee for family reasons. I am in violent agreement with my noble and learned friend the Convenor. It seems to me that this amendment, others in this group and, indeed, others in the Marshalled List seek to address something of a legislative slough of despond. If that is the case, it is a swamp that needs draining. I think noble Lords on the Government Front Bench will realise that the bar will be set very high indeed on Report.
I shall briefly address two other contributions. First, to respond to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Pittenweem, I may be misremembering but, from my past, I think “a Minister” is used as a generality in drafting to reflect the collectivity of government. It could be any Minister given the particular responsibility at the time, although I agree that some of the flanking provisions might draw that into a certain amount of doubt.
As for the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, she is ever the peacemaker but I would discourage noble Lords from pursuing the idea of putting in an illustrative list of measures that might be subject to these powers. Illustrative is only illustrative: if they are not in the statute, they are simply a bit of an Explanatory Memorandum, if you like. Even if they are in the statute, no drafter or Minister will allow them to lie there without the assertion that they are not an exhaustive list, so that anything can be added at the whim of Ministers. As my noble and learned friend the Convenor pointed out, quite a lot is being done at the whim of Ministers.