Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I concur with everything that has been said. As time goes by the role of the director is liable to get more rather than less sensitive. It seems to me that the law in this country is getting closer and closer to politics more and more often, particularly in relation to the development of judicial review. Public confidence is vital. I do not think that it needs repeating as to why it is so vital, not just in terms of the judiciary but in terms of this very sensitive office. The director will have to make some extraordinarily sensitive and difficult decisions. As we all know, because we have been debating this Bill for some while, some fine judgments will have to be made by whoever is the director. I also note that the director is to be appointed from among the Civil Service, which strikes a rather odd note. Why should the director not be appointed from anywhere? Why should he or she not be the most appropriate independent-minded person? As the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, said, it is a pity that Clause 4(4) restricts the power of the Lord Chancellor to direct to individual cases rather than to classes of cases. I wish that I had put down an amendment to that. In all the circumstances—although the publishing of an annual report is extremely beneficial; and my noble friend the Minister may say that because of this and because of that it is superfluous to express on the face of the Bill the need for independence—if ever there were a need for a single simple statement in what is already 200-plus pages of legislation, it is that this person should be absolutely independent of government.