Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt someone with such long parliamentary experience, but I would be grateful if he could give the House his guidance. I share with him the objective that, even at this very late stage, the Government should look again at how the proposals they would like to see enacted will work and how they could be improved in the light of the events of the past week or so. But is not the real dilemma for the Government that what will go back to the Commons for consideration are simply those narrow areas of the Bill which have been changed by the decisions of your Lordships’ House? The safeguards that I am sure we all want to see—perhaps with one or two exceptions—will be very difficult for the Government to introduce during the course of ping-pong.