My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who spoke in support of my amendments in this group. I also thank the Minister for his reply. He drew a distinction between principles, which he said should be in the Bill, and operational guidance. I would argue that surely it must be a non-negotiable, bottom-line principle that interpreting and translation services should be provided by qualified trained professionals; that to me sounds like a principle. An example of an operational guideline would be specifying a level of diploma qualification for a particular category of case, situation or scenario. So I urge the Minister to be emboldened by the unanimous support around the Chamber for this set of amendments and to negotiate for a bit more room for manoeuvre, particularly on Amendment 18.
To answer his question about Amendment 25 and why we should have consultations in translation, the surveys conducted by the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, showed that awareness of the code was very low. If we want to know what all victims, not just native English speakers, think about it, we need to consult properly, not partially.
I will beg leave to withdraw my amendment at this stage, but I fully expect to come back at a later stage to press further. I hope that, in the meantime, the Minister might agree to meet me again to see whether we can find any of that room for manoeuvre.