My Lords, I am not quite sure what follows the soft cop and the hard cop; certainly not the fair cop. I would like to add three points to the case against these changes, which has been so brilliantly put by the two cops. I have two points about process, one about substance.

On legislative process, it is absurd to produce a 289-page volume of detailed changes with no impact assessment. It is really very odd to say at the time that the impact assessment has been prepared and will be published, “urgently”. That is what the document said at the time. We have now been waiting exactly two months. It was two months ago today that the papers came to Parliament.

I am grateful to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for its two excellent reports. It rightly points out that, without providing adequate explanation of secondary legislation’s consequences, it is quite wrong to expect the House to approve it. Our scrutiny role is pretty vestigial at the best of times, but we cannot do our job at all if we are given no analysis of the consequences of the laws we are invited to pass. Refusing to tell us makes a mockery of the process and must verge on contempt of Parliament. So, I support both regret motions.

We are not talking just about legislative defects; we are also, I think, up against a real problem of administrative process. I do not think the reason that the impact assessment has been suppressed is incompetence; I think it is inconvenience. I suspect the analysis will have revealed that the results of the changes would not be as Ministers wished. I suspect the policy was driven not by evidence—after all, there was never any consultation —but by ideology. I suspect what was wanted was not objective analysis but assertion. I suspect officials did their job, came up with an honest report and had to see it suppressed. I do not blame the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom; I do not think his was the guiding mind behind either the policy or the suppression.

I applaud the honesty of the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, when he told the committee that the delay was because the Home Office—presumably he meant Home Office Ministers—were

“not totally content with the assumptions” and that “minor differences” in assumptions can make a “massive difference”. Quite—the cat is out of the bag. Officials used objective assumptions; they did not use politically driven presumptions. I do not expect the Minister to confirm my suspicions but I have to tell him that, in my Whitehall days, it used to be thought wise to have the analysis done before the choice of policy options. It also used to be thought quite a good idea to base the analysis on evidence collected by consultation. What drives these changes has to be ideology; it cannot be good economics, because that will do harm, and it cannot be good government in the John Stuart Mill sense, because that certainly will not produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number—indeed, it will do the opposite.

My third point is about cruelty. The change in the MIR means that, from early next year, a UK citizen will not be able to live in this country with his or her foreign partner, fiancé or spouse unless he or she earns at least £38,700 a year. That is double the threshold today and more than 70% of what UK full-time employees currently earn. Two in every three men and three in every four women in this country will be banned from bringing in their partner. For those in part-time employment, of course, the numbers will be much worse. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, mentioned, spouse’s income—actual or potential—does not count. When the present MIR was introduced 10 years ago, only 30% of employees failed to meet it; now, over 70% will. A lot of lives—and a lot of young lives—are going to be blighted. Think of it in personal, family terms: two of my children married foreign women, and four of them were paid less in their first job than the equivalent of £38,700 today. These changes are not just chauvinist and economically illiterate; they are casually, callously cruel. Between the two regret Motions, I prefer the one with teeth—the hard cop.