Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)

My Lords, I am grateful to everyone who spoke, and particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, for reminding us of the existence of that part of the security service. It could provide very useful assistance to the SIA, which, as we know from other groups in this Committee, is not really ready for the role that this legislation is going to thrust upon it. I have no doubt that that body at MI5 will be very helpful. I am also grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester for supporting these amendments, and I share his sentiment that a large number of faith-based institutions that operate on a shoestring budget are going to struggle to implement the measures in the Bill. On the same theme, I wholly endorse the amendments from my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister, particularly in respect of small arts venues and theatres and, more generally, in terms of meeting the additional expenditure to be imposed on local authorities. As ever, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower, who always speaks great sense. The Minister makes many fair points. The Bill did pass through the Home Office when I was there, but I was the Minister for Migration and Borders. I know the Bill was the subject of considerable comment and constructive criticism by the Home Affairs Select Committee. The Home Office responded to the consultation and the Bill was reconsidered. There was a consultation paper and the decision taken to increase the threshold was done in light of the consultation that was launched by the last Government. I suspect that, had we been there, we would have made that sensible decision too. As I said in my earlier speech, I commend the Government for raising that threshold to 200. That having been said, I do think the Government should ensure some sort of short-order post-legislative scrutiny to ensure that the burdens imposed by this legislation are not very damaging to our micro-businesses and small communities. I know there is always a measure of post-legislative scrutiny, but I would be very grateful if the Minister could write to me just to confirm what arrangements are in place in relation to this Bill—and, ideally, before Report, so we can consider how best to see whether there is an impact, as I fear there may be and, if there is, what measures we can take to ameliorate it. With that, I withdraw my amendment.