Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, since this seems to be a harry-the-Minister moment and I need to make up for yesterday, can I put a couple of questions to my noble and learned friend that I would like him to think about while he is waiting? First, in my considerable experience of tribunals generally, employment tribunals have always really thought that they should be courts. They behaved much more like courts than any other form of tribunal. Indeed, the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council was so called because the employment tribunals insisted that they were not administrative justice and wanted ““tribunals”” in the title, reflecting their feeling of difference. Perhaps he could comment on that. Secondly, and linking with this legal aid point, I picked up on the words of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. I take the point about priorities, and I am not going to say that the other things which he mentioned are of lower priority than this. I had a constituency case, years ago, where somebody was up against one of the big banks, with QCs all over the place, so to me the question is: is it fair, just and right that people should be left without advice and assistance when they are up against that sort of might? I am not sure that the answer is yes.