My Lords, it is late but I would love to rebut some of the Minister’s remarks about rerunning arguments, swathes of evidence, frustrating delays, uncertainty and so on. If he looks at the Ministry of Justice’s own figures over the last 10 years, judicial review took on average between 9.3 and 13 months. I can compare that with many merits-based cases that have taken considerably less time under the current Ofcom regime. He talked about no other regulators operating in that way: I point out that the water, electricity, health, aviation and post sectors all currently face scrutiny under regimes that do require consideration of merits.
However, I do not want to go into all those details. I thank the Minister because he has, in effect, said what I wanted him to say. It was half put on the record on 8 February when he talked about the requirement for the merits of a case to be,
“duly taken into account in any appeal”.—[Official Report, 8/2/17; col. 1737.]
That has been repeated today. Disappointingly, the Minister said no more about what will happen post Brexit, other than that it is a matter we will consider in due course. Nevertheless, I thank the Minister for at least going some way to providing what I asked for and beg leave to withdraw.