Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

The amendment proposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) addresses schedule 1 and the non-exclusion of clinical negligence cases in the context of convention rights. As I have informed the House more often than, perhaps, I ought, I have never conducted a clinical negligence case. [Interruption.] Mr Deputy Speaker tells me that the House has taken that point on board, and I am pleased it has taken at least one of my points on board. Notwithstanding the Government's insistence on the exclusion of clinical negligence in this context, I find it difficult to envisage any circumstances in which a case could be brought under the convention that engages this part of the law. I am not sure that my right hon. Friend addressed that point adequately—or, indeed, at all—when I intervened on him earlier, but he has said that this is a probing amendment that may have to be debated further in another place. At present however, I remain perplexed by the amendment.