Clause 4 - Consequential amendments
Criminal Defence Service Bill [Lords]
11:30 am
David Heath (Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs & Shadow Leader of the House, Law Officers (Constitutional Affairs); Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat)
I rise to make the most pedantic and pointless intervention that I can. It is purely about the felicity of the drafting. Clause 4(2)(b) refers to ''subsection (4A) of that section''. One assumes that the section implied is section 23 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1969. If that is the case, it would be slightly better and clearer drafting if clause 4(2)(a) were to read ''subsection 5A of section 23 of the Children and Young Persons Act'' so that there could be no possibility of any confusion. That is, as I say, the most pedantic point but I prefer consistency in drafting, and later in the same paragraph we phrase matters in an analogous way. I commend the point to the Minister and those who drafted the Bill.