Committee (2nd Day)

Part of Scotland Bill – in the House of Lords at 12:15 pm on 2 February 2012.

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Photo of Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Conservative 12:15, 2 February 2012

I am grateful to my noble friend. Perhaps it might be better if I made a speech rather than asked questions, but I am struggling to understand the logic here. The Minister has read from the report by the Calman commission, which was chaired by Ken Calman, for whom I have considerable respect; he was my Chief Medical Officer for Scotland. I am not sure that he is actually an expert on firearms regulation. The Minister's quotation from the report seems to be saying that this would be very difficult to administer and very expensive. That is not an argument against giving Scotland the power, because it might not use it. However, not giving it the power creates the kind of uncertainty that my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury talked about.