Lord Markham (Con)

I thank the Minister for her response and noble Lords for their involvement. As suspected, the Committee is completely united in what we are trying to achieve, and I am pleased to hear that the Minister is sympathetic. I think we all agree that the devil will be in the detail. That is why I am grateful for the offer of a meeting, which I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and many of us here will be delighted to take up. I have a couple of concerns, and we will cover these in the meeting. As the Minister mentioned, there is no obligation for regulators. The question is: why leave it to their discretion? The Minister later said that there was concern about it being overburdensome on the Secretary of State’s officials to have to determine these cases. If it is too much of a burden for a group of experts, surely it is even less likely that regulators in all sorts of different fields are going to try to apply that same knowledge. The concern about all of this is that, while the intentions are good, unless there are firm constraints in the Bill, it will just be something which, through no malcontent or wrong reason, is overlooked. That is why we feel it is very important that we have something in the Bill to add teeth to this. That is something that we would be delighted to explore further in meetings and on Report but at this point, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.