My Lords, I thank the Minister for putting on the record the Government’s reaction to these amendments. I understood the point made by my noble friend Lord Faulks, although I am not sure that I entirely buy it. Speaking on behalf of the committee, by putting forward these alternatives in this way we were trying to make the point that if something is on the face of the Bill it is not part of case management; it has to be done before case management actually starts. That goes back to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, made, which we had in mind: that is, the possibility of something that is a lot quicker, a lot cheaper and which can speed up a solution one way or another. My noble friend Lord Faulks is right: it could be an expensive addition. I want to encourage him to believe that it does not have to be that way. Clearly, both of us would want the “does not have to be” rather than the “might be”.
I say to my noble friend the Minister that if the problem is simply one of legal requirement, I am guessing that my colleagues on the committee would settle for early resolution, whatever the form in which it was framed in order to make it happen. The early, quicker, cheaper resolution—where cheaper does not mean inferior—was sought by the committee but, more importantly, by all those who gave evidence to the committee. When my noble friend gives definitive responses to some of these issues on Report, I hope that he will bear in mind the perhaps totally unfair perception which might linger that it is more important to the Government not to do anything that might cause even a tremor in the judiciary than to look for positive ways to solve the real problems to which he committed himself. Because I believe that he has committed himself to those real problems, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.