Localism Bill

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and my noble friend Lord Beecham for their support on this amendment. I am sorry if collectively—it is probably my fault—we have confused the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. I do not think the Minister’s response has moved us forward on this issue. If anything, I think it has moved us backwards. We accept that these are complex issues and that drafting legislation is difficult. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said that he thought that the courts have hitherto got the balance about right. If the Minister thinks through the logic of what he has just said, if you can judge whether somebody had a closed mind only at the point of taking a decision, and if you have to leave aside and close your mind to all the previous evidence, even though any reasonable person might say that in particular circumstances it was abundantly clear that an individual had closed his mind, could that not leave the process open to massive abuse, because all somebody who wishes to thwart or support a decision needs to do is to behave sensibly and appropriately on the day at the point of the decision-making, even though he might have made his position absolutely clear before that? I am not a lawyer, although the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, certainly is, but it seems to me that the position he put in his example—that Clause 14(2) means that you have to exclude all that evidence when it comes to court, if that is where it arrives, and the Minister said that you do—must constitute a change in the law as it is at the moment. I do not think that the Government are in the right place. We are not trying to be difficult. This is not a party political issue, and I understand the Minister trying to get it right for councillors so that they are free of the fear that they may have been subject to to date, but I simply do not think that the Government are right. We are obviously not going to press Amendment 165A tonight, but I urge that we have the opportunity to have some discussion with officials between now and Third Reading—and I would welcome the input of other noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Pannick—with the right to bring it back if necessary. There is a risk that we are changing the law.