My Lords, I promise that I will be very brief. I was thinking of Lord Newton of Braintree when the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, moved this amendment—I am sorry that there is only one Conservative in the Room. As Members will know, Lord Newton was chair of the Council on Tribunals, and later chair of the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council. He argued very strongly against the government proposal to abolish the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council. I only wish he was alive today, and I hope he is looking down at us. I am sure that he would have been delighted by the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, moved this amendment. I am sure that I am not alone in this House in missing him. When I was chair of ACAS I worked very closely with the then senior chairman—as they were called in those days—of the Employment Tribunals Service, my noble friend Lord Noon. He was part of the administrative tribunals system, and I also met Lord Newton on a number of occasions when he was performing the duties of the senior president.
This is part of the chipping away of tribunals. It may not seem very much on its own, but it is part of squeezing the tribunals together—which had totally different functions and history—cutting them back and now not even allowing transparency of decision-making. Also, as a former member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, I believe that this fails the test of transparency and openness. It is extremely worrying that we have these kinds of developments. It may seem a very small part of a very large Bill, but I hope very much that the Government will reconsider this in the name of transparency and good decision-making.