It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. As the Minister set out, the changes being made regarding the applicability of the TAR regulations to the UK are very straightforward: they bring the nomenclature in the regulations into line with UK purposes, rather than the intent of the regulations, which was to include the UK within a wider EU context. The suggested changes are therefore straightforward and pretty uncontroversial. However, I will put one or two points to the Minister for clarification, which I hope will help our deliberations.
I start by asking about the relationship of this statutory instrument to one made earlier this year, the Gas (Security of Supply and Network Codes) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019, which set out what at that point was thought to be the entirety of the elements of the TAR regulations that it was necessary to incorporate into UK law, instead of retained EU law, at the original time of exit from the EU. That SI incorporated into UK law chapters VI and VIII of the TAR regulations, which had come into force in October 2017 following the passing of the regulation. It was not thought necessary to incorporate chapters II, III and IV into UK legislation, because they were not, at that time, coming into force until after the EU exit date. Because EU exit day has been pushed on somewhat, it becomes necessary to incorporate those chapters into UK law. That is essentially what this SI does.
When the original SI was introduced, we were told that it was the intention of the Government to pass legislation to deal with what would have been the effect of chapters II, III and IV on a separate occasion after EU exit. I therefore assume that what we see before us is what the Government would have done had Brexit taken place when it was originally going to take place, and that no more legislation relating to the TAR regulations will forthcoming after the SI before us today. Will the Minister confirm that that is the case? If it is, we potentially have a landscape for the applicability of the TAR regulations overall to the future arrangements for UK gas supply.