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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

I welcome Lords amendment No. 18. It makes precisely the point that we made in Committee. I apologise to the House for the repetitive nature of these exchanges, but we have to keep saying to the Government, ““We told you so.”” We did make a point about this matter in Committee. It was also made very forcefully on Report by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), when he said that taxes could go down as well as up—although that does not happen often—and that this provision was therefore necessary. However, the Minister has coupled the provision with Lords amendment No. 19, which deals with tax variation in respect of any changes in function. Presumably that relates to clause 2, which provides for amending the constitution of regulatory bodies. The Minister simply cannot get away with saying that this is a consequence of Lords amendment No. 18, or that the provision should not have been there in the first place in order to deal with the tax variation that should have been present in respect of changes of function for bodies and for transfers of liabilities. There was clearly an omission. That is why we had to have the Ways and Means resolution earlier. This is indicative of the way in which the Bill has been brought in. There have been gross errors and omissions by the Government all the way through. Happily, most of them—I hope all of them, but I have no confidence in that—have been corrected during the passage of the Bill. That is why it is so important that we do our work of scrutinising Bills in this Chamber effectively, as I believe we have done in this case.