Question
My Lords, I point out to the Minister that there is already a mandatory requirement in Schedule 7A to have lay members on the board. I cannot see that that is a good reason to revise the schedule which, as I pointed out at the beginning, is already extremely flexible in the numbers that it allows. The only effect of this is to reduce the representation.
Answer
My Lords, I think that I have already dealt with the points that the noble Baroness raised. I take her back to my point about the importance of independent members being mandatory rather than the current schedule’s provision of "may".