Very briefly, my Lords, my noble friend’s answer is an abdication of management. If you believe that public bodies should be of a certain strength and have a certain independence but then you say, “Of course, they cannot be trusted to do the job unless we can visit them and beat them over the head every now and again”, if we keep on going down that road, we will not only be turning more and more people out there in the country off the political system but completely missing the right target, which is not
the legislation but the behaviour under it. That is what Ministers need to concentrate on. I am very disappointed that my noble friend cannot say whether, since May 2010, there has been any improvement in the performance of managing the way that time is spent in the OFT. If that is so, it is a kind of double abdication.