Clause 5 - Short title, commencement and extent
Criminal Defence Service Bill [Lords]
11:45 am
David Heath (Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs & Shadow Leader of the House, Law Officers (Constitutional Affairs); Somerton and 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.