---

Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

My Lords, I too am grateful for the noble Lord’s explanation, for which we have had one or two rehearsals. I thank him for making his officials available to me further to elucidate on it. As I said to them, and through them to him, we would have preferred the provision to be in this Bill rather than waiting for secondary legislation to tidy it up afterwards. It is all rather future tense. Although we have every confidence in the Minister, it would have been better had we had proper regulations about how this will work in practice. Throughout consideration of the Bill, both here and in another place, the Liberal Democrat Benches have been at pains to stress to the Government that we do not object in principle tothe proposed extension. However, we have been concerned about how it will work in practice. The Minister and I may disagree about whether we are going about it the right way, and, as I say, I would have preferred to have the regulations ironed out beforehand. I think that there are difficulties in practice that we will come to at a later stage and that we will be pressing. However, I recognise that this considerably improves the situation. We too will not oppose the passage.