New Schedule 2 - Discharge of fines by unpaid work
Courts Bill [Lords]
11:15 am
Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)
Further to that point of order, Mr. O'Brien. I echo the Minister's thanks to you, to your fellow Chairman, Mr. Illsley, and to all those who have assisted us. In particular, I thank the Clerk. When one is on the Opposition Benches, one is very dependent on the Clerk for help and guidance. Unlike Ministers, we do not have armies of officials to advise us. When seeking advice, we have to throw ourselves on the mercy of the Clerks, so I am particularly grateful to the Committee's Clerk, Mr. Sandall. I am also grateful to the Hansard writers, the police officers and everyone else who has been involved with the Committee.
I thank Blake Ahitow and Elizabeth Hogseth-Gill, who worked on the Bill with me as members of my team. I am grateful to the Opposition Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson), for her help and guidance. I also thank my hon. Friends on the Back Benches. Only my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr.
Goodman) is with us at the moment, because my hon. Friends the Members for Henley (Mr. Johnson) and for Witney (Mr. Cameron) have other commitments. None the less, all my Back-Bench colleagues have made helpful and thoughtful contributions. Finally, I pay tribute to Labour Back Benchers, who contributed some constructive ideas, and to the hon. Members for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) and for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb).
This has been a genuinely constructive Committee. There have been disputed issues, and we shall need to return to some of them on Report, but we have all tried to do our job properly. In some respects, I do not think that the media give Committee proceedings enough coverage. The clause-by-clause, line-by-line, word-by-word scrutiny of Bills is an important part of parliamentary procedure. We try to ensure that legislation is improved, and I think that we have done so on this occasion. Indeed, although the Minister may have been slightly confused on one or two occasions, he can now at least say that his Department—with its new acronym of Decaf—has its first genuinely decaffeinated Bill.