Member

It is welcome that this sensible SI is being introduced. I suppose I am expressing my concerns about the experience of the way the two Governments have operated over the past 15 years or so, where the willingness on both sides to get a reasonable compromise was not always in place. In one sense, the Minister cannot anticipate whether either side would be reasonable or unreasonable, so by all means we should pass the SI, but we need to know the process by which any possible disagreement between the Governments could be resolved. Indeed, if there was to be no resolution, is there a dispute mechanism? I was on the committee that debated how these things could happen, which came up with extremely sensible proposals for how disputes could be resolved, so there are mechanisms in place that have never been applied. Are those the kinds of mechanisms that could be used?