Bridget Prentice (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Lewisham East, Labour)

I beg to move amendment No. 3, in clause 5, page 6, line 1, leave out subsection (5).

The amendment is the standard removal of the privilege amendment made in the House of Lords.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 5, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Question proposed, That the Chairman do report the Bill, as amended, to the House.

Bridget Prentice (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Lewisham East, Labour)

This is the first time I have taken a Bill through Committee in my present position, as opposed to that held by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan), who has been   magnificent in ensuring that the Committee completed its work in record time. I thank you, Mr. Conway, for the way you have conducted the Committee and yesterday's proceedings; as I said earlier, you allowed a certain informality and a wide-ranging debate, albeit in a fairly short time. I also want to thank your fellow Chairman, who, sadly, will not have the benefit of listening to our deliberations.

I also thank, on the Committee's behalf, the Committee's exceptional officials, who have ensured that we have been properly briefed. I know that they have been available to give advice and help to the Opposition where necessary. I thank, too, Opposition Members for the way in which they have conducted the debate on a Bill that will serve criminal justice well, and my hon. Friends, who have been dutiful as always and have contributed where necessary.

I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West for ensuring that the debate and the Bill have been organised appropriately. As I said earlier, the Bill fell by the wayside before the general election, and that has given us the opportunity to improve it. I am pleased to have been part of the Committee.

Jonathan Djanogly (Shadow Solicitor General (Also Shadow Minister for Trade and Industry), Law Officers (Assist the Home Affairs Team); Huntingdon, Conservative)

I agree with much of what the Minister has said. This has been, if not the shortest, one of the shortest Standing Committees on which I have served. I congratulate the Minister on completing her first one; they are not all so easy, as she will know. I thank you, Mr. Conway, the officials, the police and the Doorkeeper.

The Minister spoke about the conclusion of the Committee's business. Although we agree with the thrust of the Bill there are one or two outstanding issues to be dealt with later.

David Heath (Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs & Shadow Leader of the House, Law Officers (Constitutional Affairs); Somerton & Frome, Liberal Democrat)

The normal Oscar ceremony procedure for this Bill is necessarily rather attenuated by such a short Committee stage, but I am enormously grateful to you and members of the Committee.

The bizarre thing, of course, is that both criminal and civil legal aid raise huge issues that we could not deal with properly in the context of a Bill Committee. We do not oppose the Bill, but we have serious problems with the way legal aid is moving. To me and many people it is an essential element of the welfare state that we are allowing to wither, and that worries us enormously.

There is only one issue to which we must return on Report, but I believe that there are ways to come to an accommodation on that and hope that between now and Report we shall be able to produce a form of words that will satisfy us and prevent a ping-pong between here and another place. That would be unnecessary in the context of such a Bill, and I urge the Minister to take the matter seriously and do what is required to reach the accord that is available.

I thank you for your chairmanship, Mr. Conway, and hope that every Bill on which we serve in future will be as brief and as well tempered.

Derek Conway (Old Bexley & Sidcup, Conservative)

I am grateful for those remarks. I fear that my co-Chairman, Greg Pope, who was to   chair a Committee for the first time this afternoon, may never forgive his colleagues for being so efficient.  

Question put and agreed to.

Bill, as amended, to be reported.

Committee rose at ten minutes to Twelve o'clock.