Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

The problem is that my noble friend the Minister has not explained why people are allowed recklessly to dissipate criminal assets in civil cases. Why do you have one rule for civil cases, when you can use what are described as criminal assets although they are not necessarily so, and another rule in criminal cases? What is happening at the moment is that defendants are recklessly dissipating legal aid. That is the point and that is why legal aid is so high in criminal cases—it is being recklessly dissipated. My noble friend Lord Carlile explained how it can be done: you can have application after application; you can have little trials within trials; you can have satellite litigation; the case can run on and on for months. In the old Stafford Assize Court, which possibly the noble Lord, Lord Bach, has visited—