Part of Community Care (Delayed Discharges Etc.) Bill – in the House of Commons at 2:45 pm on 19 March 2003.
May I say from the outset that the Conservatives would like two separate votes on Lords amendments Nos. 5 and 47 at the appropriate time?
However loveable the Minister might be, one has to admire her sense of humour and her nerve in trying to convince the House about certain issues today. I want to deal briefly with two of them. One is the ongoing battle over the question of fines. To her credit, the Minister has found every word in the thesaurus to try to describe the main thrust of the Bill, except the one word that describes it completely. That word is "fines". It is to the Minister's lasting annoyance that her Secretary of State—