Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I offer my congratulations to the noble Lord on his non-otiose amendment putting the various schedules to rights in terms of transposing them. Once again I have to say that the Ministry of Justice seems to be in a state of total and utter chaos on the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, shakes his head. We have already, as I think I pointed out at Second Reading, seen the Government introducing vast numbers of clauses in another place, some as late as Report, and removing some of those clauses when they brought the Bill to this House. They had to have the poor Minister make a statement to the House at the beginning of today's proceedings to announce that he is removing Clauses 42 and 43 and possibly others, and no doubt more will be coming later. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Bach, will be able to say something about that when he comes to respond. Now we have the correction of transposing one schedule with another. I hope that in future years the Government, when they bring forward yet another criminal justice Bill—if they do—might have learnt their lesson. They might have listened to the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, and the advice he offered yesterday, given to him by a former Member of this House and a Permanent Secretary of the Home Office. It is not always wise to bring in as much criminal justice legislation as the Home Office used to, and the Ministry of Justice seems to do now. If the Ministry of Justice could act just a little slower over the years and offer a bit more consideration to all its legislation, it would make the job a lot easier for this House and the another place, and it would make life a lot easier for all the practitioners throughout the legal world. I do not want to go on too long. I wonder whether the noble Lord has any further comments to make about what the Ministry of Justice would or would not like to do with future criminal justice Bills.