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Flood and Water Management Bill

My Lords, I certainly would not have expected to put down a perfectly worded amendment that made absolute sense, but the amendments were put down quite deliberately in order to provoke a discussion and produce clarity. The Minister’s explanation has clarified the situation and the background. From the point of view of the purposes of the exercise, I have made real progress, which is helpful. There is nothing else we can do because, given the stage the Bill has reached, this will probably be the last time we meet to discuss it until it goes into the tumble dryer, or washing machine perhaps. I have to hope that the soap that is used is sufficiently clean to produce a decent Bill at the end of it all. However, I cannot say that I am happy about the result. When you look at the way in which these structures are allocated, we have one lot of structures under this Bill and another lot under another Bill. That concerns a point that I will raise later this afternoon if we make sufficient progress. We ought to be looking at the confusion that arises from having these two structures in different legislation. This would have been the perfect opportunity to try to make sense of it all and not leave these functions in two separate Bills dealing with similar subjects in separate ways. That is not a good solution. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 23 withdrawn. Amendments 24 to 26 not moved. Amendment 27 Moved by