Baroness Noakes (Con)

My Lords, before the noble Baroness decides what to do with her lead amendment, I will raise two points. The first is that the noble Lord referred fairly briefly to the code of practice. Could he explain, first, how he sees the code of practice being used for the issues that we have identified in this group of amendments? Secondly, will he update the Committee on when we expect to see a revision to the code of practice? At Second Reading, my noble friend Lady Penn asked whether she could have sight of the draft updates. The noble Lord responded very positively to that, but clearly no draft updates have yet appeared. My additional question is: are we likely to get those draft updates? Clearly they have not arrived before Committee; will we get them ahead of Report? Seeing codes of practice, or updates of codes of practice, helps us to understand exactly what the Government are doing. The second point I wish to address is a mechanical one. The noble Lord has already said he will write on a number of things; I expect he will say that quite a lot as we go through Committee. It would be very helpful if those letters were copied to all the Members who are taking part in Committee, or that the mechanism of “will write” letters on the publications page of the Parliament website is used promptly so that all noble Lords who have an interest in the areas get an opportunity to see the correspondence.