Employment Bill [HL]

I declare an interest as, like my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral, who declared this interest on Second Reading, I am a mediator accredited by the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution, also known as CEDR. It seems to me that what the noble Lord is saying is eminently sensible. I fail to see how someone who has mediated in any dispute can later be part of a judicial process that arises from it. In fact, one of the first things that we were taught in the excellent course arranged by CEDR was to explain that anything that you heard at a mediation was entirely private, it would not be passed on or made use of in any way whatever and everything was, as they put it, entirely without prejudice. The thought that a member of a tribunal could mediate and later be on the tribunal seems bizarre.