I beg to move Amendment 52, in Clause 5, page 14, line 36, leave out subsection (5) and insert—

“(5) The judgment must be given at the time of conviction, except where an adjournment is necessary for preparing—

(a) pre-sentence reports,

(b) psychiatric or medical reports,

(c) victim personal statements, or

(d) further legal advice relating to sentencing.”

This amendment would ensure that judgments are handed down on conviction in all but the circumstances covered by the amendment.

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Clause stand part.

Amendment 58, in clause 26, page 35, line 19, at end insert—

“(3A) The Lord Chancellor may not make a statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (3) bringing sections 3 to 5 into force until he has—

(a) commissioned an independent review to assess the length of time required for a judge sitting alone to deliver a judgment after conviction,

(b) laid before Parliament a report on the outcome of the review under subsection (3A)(a), and

(c) made a statement to the House of Commons on the Government’s response to any recommendations from the review.”

This amendment would stop sections 3 to 5 coming into force until the Government had an evidence base for how long these provisions might delay the issuing of judgments after convictions.

I rise to speak in support of amendments 58 and 52; I will start with Amendment 58.

We find ourselves at a significant juncture in the history of our legal system, and the Government have presented us with a Bill framed primarily as a pragmatic response to the current record-breaking backlog of nearly 80,000 cases in our Crown courts. The central justification for their reforms, specifically the restriction of the right to a jury trial, is efficiency; the Government argue that by moving towards judge-led trials, we can streamline proceedings and reduce the demand on the Crown court by almost 20%.

However, when we are asked to curtail a right that has stood as a cornerstone of our democracy for more than 800 years, we must move with extreme caution. We must ask whether this fundamental change is based on robust data or merely an intuitive sense of speed and individual opinions. It is not only reasonable, but essential to ask the Government to conduct an independent formal study into the actual time savings achieved by judge-only trials before they are implemented.

Amendment 58 focuses on one of the more easily measured elements, which could be properly studied. The Government’s case for reducing jury trials is predicated on the idea that it means the trials will be 20% shorter, yet when we examine the source of this figure, its foundation begins to look unstable. Sir Brian Leveson, whose review informed much of the Bill, stated that the estimate of a 20% reduction is subject to

“very high levels of uncertainty”.

He further stated that

“seeking to model how much time would be saved is extremely difficult.”

That point is reinforced by the Government’s impact assessment. Their attempt to quantify the time saving found that it was likely to be in the range of 10% to 30%—potentially half the time saving that Sir Brian claimed—and even that figure is born of what we might call a light-touch engagement session with judges and others, rather than rigorous comparative data. If the primary justification for stripping away a constitutional right is a 20% efficiency gain, then Parliament is entitled to see clear, verified evidence that that gain is actually achievable.

While the Government promise a transformation of the system, independent experts argue that the actual time saved will be marginal. The Institute for Government has analysed the proposals and suggests that the judge-only trials in the new bench Division might save only 1.5% to 2.5% of total Crown court time. Furthermore, the Criminal Bar Association has pointed out that the Government’s impact assessment assumes that the average length of a trial in scope is six and a half sitting days when, in reality, these trials typically last closer to three days. By doubling the realistic length of those trials in their modelling, the Government have likely overestimated the potential savings. When we look at these figures, we must ask whether it is right to curtail a fundamental safeguard for a gain that may be as low as 1.5%, when today alone we have 10% of Crown courts sitting empty for no other particular reason than a lack of efficiency.

The Government’s efficiency narrative is focused almost entirely on the front end of a trial, the time it takes to empanel a jury and deliver legal instructions, and the time they claim is taken up by what some have described in evidence as playing to the jury. It ignores the back end of the process, the delivery of the judgment.

In a jury trial, once the evidence is closed, the jury deliberates continuously and provides an immediate verdict of guilty or not guilty. Importantly, in that time, a judge can be otherwise engaged, hearing other cases and doing other work. From their perspective, the fact-finding phase is over instantly.

A judge sitting alone does not have that luxury. To satisfy the requirements of transparency and guard against appeals, a judge must produce a reasoned judgment that addresses every point of law and fact. In other jurisdictions, delivering a verdict and providing those judgments can be reserved, meaning that they are written weeks or even months after the trial concludes.

Unlike a jury, a judge has a full docket of other administrative duties. We risk a situation where the time theoretically saved is then lost through another route. Without a comparative study of what I will refer to as the judicial deliberation gap, we are making systemic changes based on an incomplete set of metrics.

Additionally, because a judge’s written reasoning provides a detailed map of their logic, we are likely to see a significant spike in appeals. A jury’s verdict is difficult to appeal on the facts; a judge’s written judgment invites scrutiny for any minor error in law or logic, further clogging the higher courts. The Government have spoken frequently about the lack of availability of professionals within the legal system to hear criminal cases, and it will be the same KCs and others who will be stuck in the Court of Appeal on these cases, instead of being in the Crown court hearing cases from the backlog.

For those reasons, we propose a simple, pragmatic pause. We are asking the Government to commission an independent study of the length of time required for a judge sitting alone to deliver a judgment after conviction. This is a matter of sequencing: evidence first, implementation second. In any other field, be it medicine or engineering, we would never implement a change of this magnitude without a pilot study or a comparative dataset.

We picked this element as something amenable to study; there is nothing preventing the Government from commissioning a series of either sitting or retired judges to sit in the public galleries of trials happening in the ordinary way and then to go away and consider what reasons they would present and how long that would take. The Government could then measure and study the reality of that. Of course, that would vary from judge to judge, but a study with sufficient statistical power, with enough people taking part, could give us a genuine insight into how long these things will take.

If the Government are confident that this process will be short and sharp and able to save time, I see no reason why they would not want to know it for sure before proceeding on that basis. If that study showed that that 20% saving was a myth, and that the time taken on the back end cancelled out any gains made during the trial, of course the reforms should be paused or reversed. We should not trade a system that works for one that merely looks faster on a spreadsheet.

Jury trials are not an obstacle to justice; they are a safeguard against its abuse. It is important that we gather the facts and measure the actual time it takes for a judge to provide a reasoned judgment. If the evidence does not support the Government’s assumptions, we must have the courage to stop these reforms before we permanently damage one of our most valued constitutional inheritances.

I now move on to amendment 52. As I have mentioned, we are debating the important element of reforms that are historic in their reduction of our access to jury trials. They are predicated on the idea that that is the sole and only way that we can tackle the backlog in the Crown courts. If we are to accept the Government’s claim that trials without juries are a tool for efficiency, we must hold the system to that standard. For that reason, it seems sensible and necessary to require that, in any trial without a jury, the judge must provide their verdict and their reasons immediately.

Allowing a judge to delay their reasoning is not just a procedural flaw, but a logical contradiction that undermines the very efficiency that the Bill seeks to achieve. The Government’s most frequent argument for restricting juries is that they waste time due to the need to go slowly through the evidence and the unpredictable length of deliberations. The Government promise that a judge, as a legal expert, will streamline the process. However, that argument collapses the moment that a judge says, “I will give my verdict, but you will have to leave it with me while I go away and write it up.” The goal is to save time but, if there is a separate process that requires significant enough time that it cannot be done as part of the trial, where is the saving?

In written evidence, we were warned of what might be called a bottleneck shift, where we might clear courtroom space more quickly, only to move the delay into the judge’s chambers. As the Criminal Bar Association points out, the reasonable time provision is currently too vague. I understand that it is not unheard of in other jurisdictions with judge-alone trials, such as Canada and New Zealand, for parties to sometimes wait months for the full reasons to be given for the verdict. By contrast, a jury provides a benchmark of finality. They do not go home to handle other business for a month; they deliberate while the evidence is fresh and stay until the job is done. As I pointed out earlier, while they are doing that, the judge is free to carry on with other matters.

A case awaiting a verdict is a frozen case. It hangs over the court’s docket. It prevents the defendant from moving to the sentencing or appeal phase and potentially requires the judge eventually to relearn and reacquaint themselves with the full details of the case, perhaps weeks later. We are told that judges are professional triers of fact and that, precisely because of that expertise, we should be able to expect a system that reflects it.

A jury of 12 people must be taught the law from scratch, whereas a judge, who already knows the law, should be taking structured notes and filtering and identifying relevant and irrelevant information in real time. By the time closing arguments are finished, a professional judge has been living with the facts and the law for days or weeks. They are in the best possible position to explain their logic at that moment. When a judge delays a verdict and the reasons for it, they are forced into double-handling the evidence, re-reading transcripts and notes to recapture their original thoughts. That is not efficiency—it is a waste of judicial resources.

The requirement for immediacy is also a vital safeguard of the integrity of the law. There is potentially a subtle temptation for a judge who announces an initial verdict on a Monday, but writes the reasons for it on a Friday, to reverse engineer the logic of their original conclusions, even if inadvertently. Instead of the reasons leading the verdict, the verdict begins to dictate the reasons. The judge may subconsciously highlight only the facts that make their decision appeal-proof, rather than providing a raw, honest account of why they believed one witness over another. Members may well be familiar with the idea of confirmation bias; it is something that we are all affected by. If we make a decision and then come back to it at a later date, we have an inherent human failing of tending to dwell on, have our attention drawn to and be more mindful of things that reinforce our decision, rather than things that take away from it.

Therefore, immediate reasoning ensures that judges are ruling on the evidence as it was heard. If the Government claim bench trials are superior because they are reason-based, those reasons must be robust enough to be stated out loud at the moment of verdict, forcing a level of intellectual honesty that is the only acceptable substitute for the collective common sense of a jury.

Critics may argue that some cases are too complex for an immediate ruling. However, as some of the evidence suggests, very good reasons to delay should be defined strictly and should not include a busy schedule or a desire to write at another time. A very good reason should be limited to genuinely unforeseen situations. Indeed, as amendment 52 provides:

“The judgment must be given at the time of conviction, except where an adjournment is necessary” for specific and well understood purposes, such as preparing medical or psychiatric evaluation reports, victim personal statements that were not available or that they sought to amend, or further legal submissions. However, the substance of why must be given when “guilty” or “not guilty” is uttered.

The Government cannot have it both ways. They cannot strip away, to a great extent, the historical right to a jury trial in the name of streamlining the system and allow that system to grind to a halt while a judge reserves a decision for days, weeks or potentially even months.

To ensure that the bench trial is a tool of justice rather than of administrative convenience, we must mandate immediacy. We should not trade a system that works for one that merely looks faster, as I said earlier. Let the judge speak when the evidence is fresh and the parties are present. A verdict without immediate reasons is not streamlined justice; it is opaque, slow and intellectually suspect. If a trial without a jury is truly about efficiency, that efficiency must be visible and present in the room.

As my hon. Friend the Shadow Minister pointed out, there are a number of problems that not only arise with what clauses 3 and 4 try to do, but carry over to Clause 5, which tries to replicate aspects of jury trials in trials that will not be heard by a jury because a judge has made an allocation decision.

The problems with juries seem to be, as the Minister and the Government have articulated, time wasted through swearing in, the unpredictable nature of convening 12 people—with people sometimes dropping out—and the fact they can hear evidence only at certain times of the day, which makes the day for hearing evidence shorter. Of course, none of those things are new; they are things that have always existed with jury trials. Citing issues with juries that have existed since juries began, in order to deal with the more recent issue of backlogs, misses the point.

The Government have taken measures to deal with the more recent issues with criminal cases, including the fact that evidence inherently takes longer, although that is the same with evidence that a judge has to consider, and that cases have become more complex because of evidence and technology. That also is true of cases that are heard by a judge only. The Government have made plenty of complaints and shared plenty of views about what they think of the previous Government. They have spoken about under-investment and caps on sitting days, things that they say they have addressed through allocating more sitting days and investing in the legal system. Surely, that is the remedy for their complaints. However, they have not been prepared to spend the time to assess that remedy, to see whether the benefits in reducing the backlog will be felt in the coming months and years.

To take an inherent feature of the jury system—the jury itself—as a justification for doing away with it in certain cases because of more recent pressures for other reasons is neither logical nor fair. The problem with simply transferring all the provisions that would ordinarily happen in a jury trial to a trial that is decided by a judge alone, as clause 5 seeks to do, is that there are features of a jury system that cannot simply be replicated by a judge sitting alone. Let us remember that a jury decides the facts. It decides whether something happened and it decides what was in the mind of the defendant at the time in question. That is the preserve of the jury.

It is for the judge, even in a jury trial, to decide the law, to direct the jury—where appropriate—and to decide issues of procedure. Some of the procedural issues or arguments about evidence, including about whether evidence is admissible or not, are decided by the judge in the absence of the jury. The jury is sent out of the room. Of course, that can make the whole trial last longer, but there is a very good reason for it. It is because sometimes the arguments that are made—for example, arguments about the admissibility of certain evidence—are in themselves prejudicial to the decision maker of the facts, which is the jury, or prejudicial to the way that they might decide the case. A judge might need to hear the contested evidence, or at least hear what it is about to decide whether it is admissible.

A judge might decide that evidence is inadmissible because it is not relevant, or—this is where I go way beyond my legal expertise; I never practised as a criminal lawyer—because it might effectively prejudice the jury. We do not want the jury seeing that evidence, which is why they are out of the room. If the judge rules that the evidence is inadmissible, the jury come back into the room never having seen it, and the trial continues with the jurors’ minds unclouded by inadmissible evidence.

However, when the judge is also deciding the facts—that happens, of course in magistrates courts, where the magistrates decide the facts and are guided on the law by a legal professional sitting in front of them—and indeed when a judge is deciding the facts and the law, and procedural issues and issues of the admissibility of evidence, then, if they take separate arguments or separate submissions from the defence and prosecution on whether an item of evidence is admissible or not, and they decide that it is not admissible because it would cloud the judgment of the jury or confuse the issues of the main trial, they effectively have to pretend that they never heard that prejudicial evidence, having decided that it is prejudicial.

Judges are trained and professional, and have to do all this anyway in certain cases where a judge decides both—

We have already covered a fair amount of the same ground. The example that I gave a couple of sittings ago was in relation to judges considering contempt of court applications, where they themselves would have seen the offending behaviour and have to make a determination about it. Judges are well used to dealing with these issues, both in the criminal context and the civil context. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that?

I accept that judges can do all this, and indeed sometimes do all this. Surely, however, the Minister will accept that, given human nature, there is a limit to the extent to which a human being can be so well trained or so professional that they can simply disregard something that they have heard as though they had never heard it. Indeed, that is one reason why we have jury trials. It is also one of the leading reasons why in more complex cases or longer cases—in cases involving murder, or sexual offences, or in all those cases that have to be heard by a jury—we have a jury. It is to separate the decision makers of fact from the decision makers of law and procedure.

As we are touching on these issues, those of us on the Opposition Benches are happy to say that we have to work harder on judicial accountability and decision making, and we are not afraid to say that we think it is better that juries do these things, because judges err.

There is an irony really, because at the heart of the Bill is another measure in relation to the powers that we give family court judges. My hon. Friend will know that the impact assessment says that the law at the moment basically says that judges already know—based on the law—that the welfare of the child comes before visitation rights. The Government accept that that is what the law says, but they do not trust judges to understand and accept that law. They want to introduce measures that further restrict judges’ decision making. The Government cannot have it both ways; they cannot introduce measures in the same Bill that are based on the idea that judges are not sufficiently enacting the law as written, and then say that we are wrong to have concerns about judicial decision making in these sorts of scenarios.

My hon. Friend the Shadow Minister makes a good point, and we will get on to talking about the provisions relating to the family courts.

In relation to this particular provision, the family courts are where we have a judge making a decision on very emotive facts and on procedure. But family courts are far more collaborative in nature. A judge’s role is also about straining to find consensus. That is very different from the criminal courts where, ultimately, a judge or a jury, depending on who is hearing the case, has to make a yes-or-no decision on innocence or guilt. That has wide-ranging and profound impacts, which sometimes turn on a knife edge on hard-to-determine evidence. That is different from the family court, where the intention is to try and find consensus, rather than making those decisions.

Of course, juries are used in civil courts in some defamation cases. Again, it is where the value judgment on intention—why somebody made a statement about someone and whether they knew it to be false or not—of 12 ordinary people selected at random in this country is better than a judge’s decision making alone.

My issue with Clause 5 is that it simply sweeps all sorts of provisions in a number of existing clauses of different legislation passed at different times into judge-only trials when those provisions were designed for jury-led trials. Unless I have misunderstood, that seems to have been done through a set of Government amendments and elements of existing law that were not envisaged on the first drafting of the Bill. That possibly demonstrates the slightly rushed and painful nature of how we are having to deal with this legislation, with so many loopholes and gaps in it.

I am happy to be discharging my duties, dissecting and scrutinising the Bill. I do not mind how long it takes because that is my job; it is why I am here and I am pleased to be doing it.

On that final point, we are all delighted to be here and perform the function of Government properly. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Exactly, and the company of all Members is a delight, as always.

On a serious point, there is some suggestion that the Government are rushing the legislation through. I do not think that is right. Yes, the Government have a sense of urgency about gripping this problem. I make no apologies for that. The depth of the problem and the shameful delays demands that urgency, but it is not true to say that this is rushed legislation. We commissioned a two-part independent review of hundreds of pages. We took our time to consider how we would bring that forward in a pragmatic way that vindicated the evidence base that the IRCC had put together. Now we are scrutinising it in the usual and proper way, and it will take as long as it takes. I do not want the public to think that the integrity of the process is somehow compromised. I know it would not be under your chairship, Ms Butler.

I am going to respond to Amendment 52. I will then turn to Clause 5 and then to amendment 58. These provisions relate to the production of judgments. I have heard that there is a challenge around the time that may be taken to produce these judgments and at what point in the process such judgments are produced. I will make a general observation, which I have touched on before: one of the important safeguards in a judge-only context is the provision of reasons. As decision makers ourselves in different contexts, we know that the fact that we need to justify and provide a rational basis for our conclusion, particularly a conclusion as important as whether or not someone is guilty when that will have consequences for that person’s liberty, is a good thing.

It is suggested that this will lead to more appeals. Well, it will lead to more scrutiny for sure, because people will know why they have been convicted, or indeed acquitted. At the moment, one of the features of a jury trial is that they never know. Having spoken to complainants and participants in the system, sometimes not knowing how on earth the jury could have reached the conclusion it did having heard all the evidence can lead to a lack of closure. One of the guardrails and important safeguards in judge-only trials is the provision of reasons. Our judges, familiar as they are with the process of adjudication—that is what they are trained in—know well how to formulate reasons.

Amendment 52 would require judgments in judge-alone trials to be given specifically at the time of conviction, except where an adjournment is needed for sentencing-related documents to be prepared. We can see no particular reason why those specific documents would be necessary for the giving of reasons for a verdict. In fact, if those documents contained information that was not part of the trial evidence, those parts of the documents should not be taken into account when giving reasons for a verdict.

I understand the concerns that have been raised about the time taken to deliver a reasoned judgment, but I take Members back to what we heard at the oral evidence session, where a panel of senior judges, and in particular a former recorder of Liverpool, confirmed that they do not expect providing verdicts, including reasoned judgments, to take a long time. Indeed, Clement Goldstone said:

“I also do not accept that there will be additional time spent in the writing of judgments. The vast Majority of decisions will follow the conclusion of the defence speech”.––[Official Report, Courts and Tribunals Public Bill Committee, 25 March 2026; c. 76, Q161.]

The suggestion was that in the vast majority of cases, reasons could be given immediately.

The Bill provides that:

“The judgment must be given at, or as soon as reasonably practicable after, the time of the conviction or acquittal.”

It provides for the vast majority of judgments to be handed down at the time of conviction or acquittal, not least because that makes practical sense. It also serves the benefit of some of the reasons of timeliness that the Shadow Justice Minister pointed out. The “reasonably practicable” qualification is necessary, as recognised by the judges at the oral evidence sessions, and indeed by this amendment, because there are times when judges might need more time for detailed consideration. However, limiting that to scenarios where sentencing documents must be produced does not make sense in our view. I am confident that our judiciary can determine when a judgment might be reasonably and responsibly delivered. For those reasons, I urge the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle to withdraw amendment 52.

Clause 5 is a technical but essential provision. Its purpose is to ensure that the statute book works with coherence and consistency where a Crown court trial is conducted without a jury under the new judge-alone provisions inserted by clauses 3 and 4. Many of the Acts cited in this clause currently refer explicitly to a “jury”, a “jury’s verdict” or a “jury’s finding”. Where Parliament provides for a trial to proceed without a jury, it is imperative that the law makes clear beyond doubt who is performing those functions instead. This clause ensures that, in judge-only trials, those functions are exercised by the court, and that the court has the same powers and jurisdiction it would have if a jury were present.

As part of this we are ensuring that judges provide those reasoned judgments, setting out how they reached their verdict. As I have said, that is an important safeguard against arbitrary decision making and is crucial to enhancing transparency. That extends to the existing judge-only provisions, such as in cases where there is a real risk of jury tampering. This clause is essential to ensure that these obligations apply consistently across all legal frameworks for judge-alone trials. Without these consequential amendments, there would be legal uncertainty and inconsistency, with existing legislation continuing to assume the presence of a jury where one was no longer sitting.

This clause does not expand the circumstances in which judge-alone trials may be appropriate under the new provisions introduced by clauses 3 and 4, nor does it affect who is eligible for trials by judge alone. It provides the necessary support to operate the new provisions established by clauses 3 and 4. Its only function is to ensure that, where Parliament has decided that a trial may proceed without a jury, the surrounding legal framework is consistent and operable. As such, I commend clause 5 to the Committee.

Finally, I come to amendment 58, which would prevent the commencement of clauses 3 to 5 unless and until the Lord Chancellor had commissioned an independent review into the length of time required for a judge sitting alone to deliver a judgment following conviction, laid that report before Parliament and made a statement to the House of Commons setting out the Government’s response. The shadow Minister will be unsurprised to hear that the Government cannot support that approach; we quite simply do not have that time at our disposal. Any pilot in this context would require primary legislation. As I have said, the Government inherited a justice system in crisis with a record and rising backlog. Without immediate action, including bringing these reforms forward as soon as is reasonably practical, the situation will continue to spiral far beyond the point of recovery, and we cannot let that happen.

I understand the challenge and concerns about timing, but we have heard from experienced judges how that is likely to work. Providing judgments will replace work that judges already have to do in jury trials. They will no longer have to give summing up remarks; those take time and, as we have heard, involve explaining the law to the jury, setting out the prosecution and defence’s cases, and summarising and giving directions on how to assess evidence—in essence, providing the route to verdict. That is time already taken up in our current constitution. That exercise is relevant to the preparation of an eventual reasoned judgment that would need to happen; it does not materially add to the time that would be taken.

This Bill says that judgments must be delivered at, or as soon as is reasonably practical after, the time of conviction or acquittal. It anticipates that, in the majority of cases, judgments will be delivered at that time. I am confident that our judiciary can determine when a judgment might be responsibly delivered.

The Crown court backlog is at a record high. Everyone in the system—victims, witnesses and defendants—is already waiting too long for justice. In that context, the Government do not believe that it is responsible to delay the commencement of clauses 3 to 5 pending the commissioning and completion of a further review, particularly when we have the views of senior and retired Crown court judges who have been clear that they do not expect the delivery of judgments to involve significant delay. Sir Brian Leveson considered the matter in part 1 of his review and was clear that he did not anticipate that such judgments would need to be lengthy or even in writing. For that reason, I urge the shadow Minister to withdraw his amendment.

I want to pick up on a couple of points the Minister made, particularly the one that our Amendment, in relation to a study, would require primary legislation. That is simply not the case. We specifically identified an element that could be studied without a need to change the law. No law would need to be changed to allow some retired or sitting judges to sit in on a court case and provide the judgment that they would have given had they been hearing it. No legislation is required for that.

The Minister leans heavily on the experienced judges who agree with her, but more than 3,000 legal professionals, including senior retired judges, disagree with her. And of course, to move away from opinions, the Government’s own study, which attempted to turn opinions into a quantitative exercise, found that the savings could be half those that Sir Brian Leveson said are achievable. It found that they could be between 10% and 30%, whereas Sir Brian said they would be 20%.

The Minister said that time would be saved on summing up. I sincerely hope the defendant will get to hear the same things a jury would have got to hear. If they do not, I suspect we will see a further increase in appeals.

The Minister spoke about the time taken. A Bill that will have a seismic impact on our legal system has been introduced without a public consultation or pre-legislative scrutiny, and the Committee time has been less than that given to the Railways Bill. As I understand it, the Bill has been given roughly the same time as the Salmon Act 1986, which introduced the offence of salmon handling, so it is reasonable to ask whether it has been given sufficient time.

If the Minister thinks there will be no real gap in time in terms of judgments, there is no reason for the Government to oppose amendment 52, which says that those should be immediate. Given the controversy and the varying opinions from experts on both sides of the debate, a non-legislative study is a perfectly reasonable thing for the Opposition to ask for. We will press amendment 52 to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

The Committee divided: Ayes 3, Noes 9.

Question accordingly negatived.

Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

The Committee divided: Ayes 9, Noes 5.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.