Clause 2 - Rights to representation: financial eligibility
Criminal Defence Service Bill [Lords]
11:15 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 seem to spend a large part of my life debating amendments replacing the word ''may'' with the word ''shall'' or ''shall'' with ''may.'' It is a hardy perennial.
I shall be satisfied if the Minister makes it clear that it is the Government's intention to introduce regulations in the form implied by the Bill. I think that that is their intention, and it is consonant with what she said earlier. This might be the appropriate moment to address the compromise that I suggested earlier. If those regulations were also to prescribe circumstances of genuine disagreement over the eligibility terms of a particular financial arrangement either in law or in determining the ownership of assets, and if the matter could properly be considered under those regulations, I think that that would deal with our grave concern about the amendment passed earlier by the Committee. I therefore ask the Minister carefully to consider that proposition.