My Lords, first I want to declare an interest. As my noble friend Lord Beecham said, I had something to do with an earlier consideration of similar problems when my party was in Government and I was in office, and I want to say something about that in a moment. I also declare that I am currently a practising lawyer and that I and my firm get involved in the sort of cases that this may be concerned with. I have seen how these systems work in the United States and I have thought about them quite hard. I want to make it clear that broadly speaking I am in favour of the proposal for deferred prosecution agreements. However, I have some questions that I will come to, and I understand very well the point made by my noble friend about the timing of the proposals being brought forward.
Before I turn to the substance of what I want to say, I am a little confused at the moment about the procedure that is being followed. This may be because unfortunately I was detained from coming to the House when noble Lords were considering the previous group of amendments. I came in at the tail end to hear something that I am not quite sure I understood, about matters being discussed again on a future occasion. But unless I have misunderstood, I notice that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has moved government Amendment 155ZB, which provides for the introduction of a schedule relating to deferred prosecution agreements. Without,
as it were, dissent, we seem at least to have got the concept of a schedule into the Bill. Whether that means that the noble Lord is going to move the schedule as a complete schedule, I am not sure, but if he does, that gives rise to questions about whether there will be any real opportunity to debate or amend its provisions. I want to ask some questions about the detail, so I would be grateful if the noble Lord could explain the situation.