I would hope this site might have this kind of explanation. Perhaps it does. I suppose we should study it. And if the answers aren't there in comprehensible form, use the "contact" part of the site to ask them and if need them,,keep asking them.

Or of course (or I really mean "and"), if you haven't written to your MP recently (http://www.faxyourmp.com/), send his or her a communication specifically asking that question.

But I still think an amendment along the lines I suggested just above is probably a very realistic way forward. Non-confrontational, and gives them an easy way out, which doesn't involve any u-turns or loss of face. Why, all Kim Howells has to do is come up with that one, and he could find himself, improbable as it seems right now, as some kind of folk hero. "Well of course this was what I intended to do all along - surely that should have been obvious from what I said on that Mike Harding show."