Lord Lansley (Con)

My Lords, I know many of us who were on the International Agreements Committee at an earlier stage, when we were looking at the difficulties of negotiating a deal with India, realise that it is a significant achievement and very welcome. It is not, however, as comprehensive as we had hoped it might be. Positively, I am very glad to see the procurement opportunities that it offers. In that regard, access to procurement in India is very large scale, but we need something which is digitally available, a bit like our own Tenders Electronic Daily. Is there an expectation that small businesses will have access to those procurement opportunities through that kind of mechanism? Secondly, we had hoped, at one time, that we might—and it would be very significant—have an investor-state dispute settlement provision in the deal. I do not understand that there is such a thing, but are there any side letters about giving assurance to UK investors in India for the future? Regarding parliamentary scrutiny, the CRaG provisions will apply, but would the Minister reiterate what we call the “Grimstone rule”—that is, if our International Agreements Committee was to recommend that the deal should be debated by this House, that such a debate would take place before the Government proceeded to ratification?