Public Bodies Bill [HL]

My Lords, I rise, first, because I want to get a word in edgeways as a non-lawyer; and, secondly, because it seems appropriate that I should follow part of what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, said—prefacing it by declaring a now historic interest as the person who chaired the Council on Tribunals and its successor body, the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council, for no less than 10 years from 1999 until last year. My name is not attached to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, and I shall speak to the AJTC later, but I appreciate and agree with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, has said. As I was not able to be here for Second Reading, I shall not make the Second Reading speech I might have made, deeply unhelpful as the Government would have regarded it. However, I wish to make three points. First, I welcome, as did the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, the spirit in which my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach has responded to the criticisms at Second Reading. Whether or not it goes far enough we shall discover in the course of our debates, but it has been a remarkable exercise in rewriting the Bill as it goes along. It must have taken him quite a lot of work to persuade his colleagues to make such changes. I congratulate him and I do not want to make his life any more difficult. Secondly, albeit as a non-lawyer and without going over all the speeches, I could not find a word uttered by the original proponent, the noble Lord, Lord Lester, or his seconder, as it were, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, with which I disagree, and there are probably quite a few noble Lords on this side of the Committee who share that view. Thirdly, I say to my noble friend—as I am happy to call him—Lord Phillips, a former constituent, and to the Minister that I spent five years as Leader of the House of Commons—I was more or less in charge of the Government’s programme in those days—listening to Ministers trying to say that you did not need to put stuff in a Bill because it was implicit and impaling themselves on a ludicrous argument that something that did not make any difference was worth dying in a ditch over. I hope the Minister is not going to do it again.