I thank all those who were kind enough to support this amendment. The Minister talked about adequate examination. I have great respect for the Minister and especially for his integrity: when he borrowed my house, I got the key back. It took some months, but it came and it is a very special key, because they stopped making them 50 years ago. I had to have them specially made, so I thought, “Oh, no, I have to go through that expense again, because I could not possibly stick a poor young politician with the cost of a key like that”. Suddenly, like magic, it flopped through the door one day.
But what credence can we give to the legal advice the Minister has had, which he referred to earlier, when the Government’s own advisers have said that the legality of this is a very fine argument? The truth of the matter is, as has already been mentioned today, that one of the main planks of the Human Rights Act
is the right of property. The Government are gaily switching around bits of property at a Minister’s whim. I cannot believe that that can have been passed as solid by so many august legal entities unless they themselves had an axe to grind. Of course, there is also, as has been mentioned, the retrospective angle of the legislation.
4.45 pm
The Minister has made a very good attempt at short notice, and needs to be admired for that. It is a pity; people talk about whether a Bill has been supervised properly—we have not even got the Minister who has taken the Bill through the House here to answer it. As I said, I am a great admirer of the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, but he has been pitched in because this Bill is being dashed through. It is a very complicated Bill; it is not something simple. There are all sorts of complexities that will come through during this debate. I feel that the Minister needs to think carefully about some of the answers he is giving, even though I appreciate the difficulty that he has, having been lumbered with it, in trying to give adequate answers to the points being made. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.