Clause 1
Planning
4:00 pm
Bob Neill (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; Bromley and Chislehurst, Conservative)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her helpful intervention. Underneath the joke there is a serious point. One of the concerns that we will come to late on—I shall be careful not to rush too far in front, Mr. Illsley—is the composition of the commission. In the evidence-taking sessions, concern was raised about what sort of advice will be available to the commission. The truth is that there is a tendency, which we will come to in more depth, to denigrate cross-examination, but it requires some skill and expertise and it is important that there be transparency. I will be concerned if this becomes the opportunity for a bottomless pit for substantial sums to be expended, and if we do not know how those will be accounted for and what opportunity there will be for people to question that.
Finally, there is the interesting question of equality of arms, which is a basic legal concept that is important in the human rights legislation. If paragraph 13 of schedule 1 gives power to the commission, which is carrying out an inquisitorial process to arm itself with substantial outside legal advice, but there is no provision for those seeking to challenge what is happening or to make representations to the commission to avail themselves of like advice, there is yet another route for legal challenge and delay. That indicates how ill-conceived the Government’s proposals are.
We are firmly of the view that the clause is ill-conceived. I hope that our amendments clarify the matter. We do not want the clause to stand part for all the reasons that have been rehearsed and for reasons that I have just mentioned.