Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

The noble Lord talks about the ““very small number”” of itinerant collectors, which was at the heart of the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding. If there are so few in each local authority, why could a departmental official not have contacted each local authority and asked them whether it is two, three or half a dozen? That would not have taken huge resources at the department, particularly when it was at the very heart of the defence of the legislation being used by the Minister at the Dispatch Box, both last week and this week.