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Compensation Bill [HL]

The difficulty with legislation in the Bill, as the noble Lord knows better than I, is whether it rules out the flexibility one wishes to have. I have a personal view as a Minister that the more we can do through secondary legislation effectively and properly within the framework, especially of what the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee says, that that enables us to develop the policy over time. The noble Lord will know too that I have a general adverse reaction to lists. My experience in any Bill I have ever done is that the minute we put something in the Bill, lo and behold somebody wants to put something else in it. It grows. We end up losing things that should be there and we leave ourselves in a more inflexible position. I do not wish to be difficult about this, but that would be a difficulty in trying to think that through. We hope that the regulations will be in place by the end of 2006.