Public Office (Accountability) Bill

Lord Lemos Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st September 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lemos]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Lemos) (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope all noble Lords had a good break over the summer. As your Lordships might perhaps have noticed, we have been beavering away at the Ministry of Justice. If you get a call from No. 10, as I did on the last day before Recess, be careful what you wish for. I thank the many noble Lords who interrupted their summers to meet me; I appreciate their time and commitment enormously.

It is a privilege to open the debate on this Bill. It is a long-overdue piece of legislation, one that will deliver one of the biggest constitutional changes in the relationship between the public and the state for generations. We should not underestimate its importance or the impact it could have.

I start, as I should, by paying tribute to those who have fought to get us here. The Hillsborough families experienced the most awful injustice. The state turned on them exactly when it should have been on their side. They never gave up on the truth and, ultimately, getting the justice they deserved. They insisted that no one should ever have to go through what they went through. It is their courage and determination that have brought us to your Lordships’ House today with this legislation in front of us.

I also pay tribute to Members of your Lordships’ House for their determined and courageous work over many years—indeed, decades. Many Peers here today have stood by the families and supported them. Please forgive me: I do not have time to mention everyone as time is short.

I am also mindful that it is not just the Hillsborough families whose work has brought us to this point. There has been a coalition of families and campaign groups who have fought for the truth, and I thank all of them on behalf of the Government for the Bill being debated today. I am pleased to note that some of them are in the Public Gallery today and many others will be watching our proceedings, and I am sure that all speakers in this debate will keep that in mind. I warmly welcome them to your Lordships’ House today.

We have seen time and again why the Bill is so vital. The Post Office Horizon scandal, infected blood, Grenfell and, most recently, the shocking Nottingham maternity scandal all involved a lack of candour and efforts to conceal the truth. In some cases, attempts were even made to create false narratives against the victims. As well as these well-known examples, we must also bear in mind the many individual cases where the state has not just failed in its duty but actively worked against the people it has wronged. That is disgraceful.

The public should be able to expect that our public institutions will do everything reasonably possible to prevent serious failures happening. They should also be able to expect that, when something does go wrong, those institutions will tell the truth and—this is a key point to which we will return in the debate—tell the truth quickly. That requires more than candour when someone is called to an inquiry, inquest or investigation. Public servants must know that, when something has gone wrong, there is an obligation to come forward and say so. They should be able to do so without fear of professional consequences, and it should be clear what is required of them. If they believe there is wrongdoing or behaviour that falls below what is expected, there should be routes for them to report that. The aim of the Bill—I stress this point—is to change the culture of public bodies once and for all. No family should have to fight for the truth about what happened to their loved ones, no family should face a profound disparity in legal representation and no public official should be in fear that they will be asked to lie, conceal the truth or stay silent. That is our intention for the Bill.

I will set out the measures in the Bill, starting with the two duties of candour that it creates. The first is a statutory duty of candour and assistance, requiring all public servants and officials to come forward proactively, as I have said, and act with candour, transparency and frankness in all inquiries and investigations seeking to establish the truth. Failure to comply, with the intention of impeding the investigation, or being reckless in doing so, will be a criminal offence punishable by up to two years’ imprisonment.

The duty will apply to statutory and non-statutory inquiries, coroners’ investigations and inquiries called by local authorities, with a power for Ministers to extend it to other types of investigation through secondary legislation. While principally focused on the public sector, it will also apply to private sector bodies such as those delivering public functions, those with health and safety responsibilities and relevant public sector contractors. These measures will apply across the United Kingdom and I thank the devolved Governments for their close work with officials in the Ministry of Justice and the Cabinet Office.

I know there has been particular interest in how the duty will apply to the intelligence services. The Government have always been clear that the intelligence services are within scope, but we have listened to concerns about the application of the duty to individuals and the handling of sensitive information. Amendments made in the other place ensure that the duty applies fully to all current and former intelligence services personnel, while using established procedures to protect national security information.

What this means in practice is that, where an individual employee of a national security body receives a request under the duty for protected information, they must pass that information to the head of the relevant authority, rather than directly to the inquiry or investigation. The head of the authority is then responsible for providing that information, subject to existing legal and practical safeguards on disclosure. Where necessary, restrictions on disclosure can be sought through existing legal routes including, in exceptional cases, converting proceedings into a secure statutory inquiry.

The amendments also make it clear that responsibility for notifying an inquiry, inquest or investigation about sensitive material rests with the national security body to which that information belongs. Where another public authority holds a copy, it must inform the relevant national security body, allowing that body to assess the material in its wider context and ensure that the appropriate safeguards are applied. This means that the duty applies in full to the intelligence services, while providing confidence to the public and our international partners that sensitive national security information will continue to be protected. I particularly thank the chair and members of the Intelligence and Security Committee for their constructive work with the Government in reaching this clear and balanced position.

This Bill also establishes a legal duty for public authorities to promote and maintain high standards of ethical conduct, including having a code containing a professional duty of candour for all public servants. These codes will be rooted in the seven Nolan principles and must set out clear expectations for conduct, consequences for breaching them and routes for reporting misconduct, making protected disclosures and raising complaints. Public authorities will, in turn, have a duty to promote and maintain high standards of ethical conduct among their employees. This is a cornerstone of the Government’s approach. While codifying good practice is important, the purpose here is to go further: it is prevention. We want to create a culture in which wrongdoing is identified and confronted early, before institutional defensiveness takes hold and failures are compounded by attempts to conceal them.

Hillsborough demonstrated the terrible consequences when public servants deliberately mislead the public and the media in order to spread a false narrative. The families were denied the truth and that injustice persisted for decades. This law should provide a powerful deterrent against such conduct ever happening again. This Bill therefore creates a new offence of misleading the public. It will apply where a public authority or official intends to mislead the public, or is reckless as to that possibility, and knows or ought to know that their conduct is seriously improper. That is a deliberately high threshold. The conduct must involve significant or repeated dishonesty on matters of significant concern to the public. The act must cause or risk causing harm—whether economic, physical or psychological—and must represent a significant departure from what would have been expected of that person in carrying out their functions.

These safeguards ensure that minor or inconsequential matters are not criminalised. Likewise, legitimate activity such as undercover policing will not be affected. The offence is targeted at serious misconduct of the kind we witnessed at Hillsborough. Those convicted will face up to two years in prison and an unlimited fine.

The Bill also replaces the common-law offence of misconduct in public office with two new statutory offences: seriously improper acts and breach of the duty to prevent death or serious injury. This will bring greater clarity to the law, defining who is covered, the conduct that is captured and the consequences of abusing public office. It will ensure that officials who abuse their position or fall short of the behaviour expected of those in public office will continue to face serious consequences, including up to 10 years in prison for the offence of seriously improper acts and up to 14 years for breach of duty to prevent death or serious injury.

Let me turn to the Bill’s measures in respect of legal aid. Too many bereaved families go to inquests seeking answers about the death of a loved one, only to find themselves facing the full weight of the state. Public bodies arrive with experienced lawyers, while families without access to publicly funded support are left to represent themselves, meet the costs personally or turn to crowdfunding. This is a massive and indefensible asymmetry.

This Bill will address that profound imbalance. It will ensure greater parity by providing bereaved families with access to help and advocacy, regardless of their financial circumstances, while removing burdensome bureaucracy at one of the most difficult moments of their lives. The cost will, rightly, fall to the relevant public authorities, or their responsible government departments, where they are interested persons at an inquest. The Bill will place a duty on them to consider whether their own legal representation is necessary and proportionate, taking account of the support available to families and their obligations to support the investigation and establish the facts of what happened; but effective participation is about more than representation.

The experience of families in this situation has informed our approach, and the Bill will require guidance setting clear principles for how public authorities should participate in inquests. It will also empower coroners and inquiry chairs to raise concerns about the conduct of public authorities or their legal representatives at an inquiry or inquest. The principle is simple: an inquest or inquiry is not a contest to be won. Those representing the state should approach it not as adversaries but with sensitivity and respect, and with the proper purpose of helping to establish the truth, learn lessons and provide bereaved families with the answers they deserve.

The measures I have set out today are substantial but the principles behind them are simple: first, that we should create a culture in our public institutions that prevents failures happening in the first place; and, secondly, that where something does go wrong, the truth must come out—fully, candidly and without delay, because delay has a cost. Every year spent fighting for answers is another year in which families live with uncertainty, their grief prolonged by unanswered questions. Difficult truths are always painful, but concealing them, or allowing them to emerge only after years of struggle, prolongs and significantly compounds that pain.

This House brings formidable experience to the issues addressed by the Bill, and I know noble Lords will want to scrutinise it closely. I can say on behalf of the Government that we will approach that scrutiny constructively. I look forward to hearing contributions from across the House today and to working closely with noble Lords as the Bill proceeds to the later stages.

We cannot undo the injustices that brought us here, or the pain and anguish endured by those who, through no fault of their own, were forced to fight for the truth, but we can learn from all this. We can seek to prevent the failures of the past happening again. We can ensure that when public institutions do fail, the instinct of the state is not to close ranks or to wait to be challenged but to come forward, tell the truth, account for what went wrong and put it right. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for participating in this debate today. I think all noble Lords will agree with me that it has been an immensely powerful debate, with a deep sense of reflection and consideration, and I greatly welcome the sense of consensus and collaboration that has prevailed throughout the discussion today. That demonstrates—as does the whole genesis of the Bill—a phrase that my noble friend Lord Blunkett used: there is strength in adversity, and it is that strength and the spirit of that which we seek to draw on in taking the Bill forward. I particularly thank the noble Lords who drew on their personal experiences—I was very moved by that.

I have to say that it is a humbling privilege for me to be responsible for progressing the Bill through your Lordships’ House. I am very proud to be doing that and to be following my noble friend Lady Levitt, who has done such a distinguished job to get us to where we are today.

I will seek to address as many of the issues as I can, but I know I will fail. I have not a hope in hell of addressing all the issues that were raised in 45 speeches, and I am not terribly good at namechecking everyone who spoke, but I will try my best. On the detailed comments about scopes made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, and the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, for letting me off the hook of having to reply to them all this evening, but I will respond to them in detail, both in writing and in Committee. I have already written to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, on some of these matters, and we will continue to engage in that way.

I promise to write in detail to all noble Lords who have participated in this debate because I know, as I say, that I will get as far as I can but I will not be able to deal with everything. I look forward to continuing to meet with all noble Lords who are interested. Some noble Lords have specifically mentioned that they would like to meet me. I would be delighted to do that, and I will meet with others too. Between now and the debates in Committee, I will also meet with campaigners and family members, including, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, the Devine family—I would be delighted to do that. We shall continue these discussions in Committee.

I will now turn to some specific items that have been raised. My rough rule of thumb is to try to deal with the issues raised by the largest number of Peers, if I can, but I will see how I do. Every one of your Lordships who has spoken in this debate made the point that this is about culture change. If we do not achieve that, we have seriously failed in our duty. I do not have time to namecheck all noble Lords, but I will just mention the noble Lord, Lord Wills, whom I have had the pleasure of speaking to several times, and the work he has done over a long time on all this, and the work that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has done through the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I was very struck by the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, to which I will return in a moment.

I will first set out the Government’s position on the ways in which we can ensure this is effective at the cultural level as a prevention mechanism. I very much agree with the comments made by the noble Baronesses, Lady Sanderson and Lady Cavendish, that there are strong interdependencies here, and the Bill comes as a package rather than as a series. The Government will publish statutory guidance to support public authorities to establish the codes that the Bill requires, to ensure they meet the requirements of the Bill. We have had a number of important and interesting observations about how we can do that effectively, and I am very happy to continue those discussions. I am very interested to continue discussing how we can, through the Bill, begin to drive ethical behaviour throughout the organisation. A number of noble Lords have made the point about the junior ranks, and I take that very seriously.

I was very struck by the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, on leadership. The noble Lord, Lord Barber, made the same point. We all know that that is the centre of what we are discussing here. The Government, under the former Prime Minister, commissioned the new Ethics and Integrity Commission to work towards becoming a centre for excellence for codes of conduct. That is an independent body and the Cabinet Office duty of candour team is working closely with the officials of the Ethics and Integrity Commission on how we take this forward. As part of that, the Ethics and Integrity Commission will research and develop guidance on codes of ethics that will be published on its website, so all public authorities will have access. But I am not seeking to argue that through those traditional means we can bring about the culture change that we seek.

The observations by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, on the social and psychological aspects of the changes we are seeking seemed to me very pertinent. This is not just a legal exercise. I was very struck by the phrase of the noble Baroness, Lady Cavendish: we cannot delegate our conscience to regulators. I know that to be true, having worked in private sector and public sector regulation myself, including in the financial services. Regulators can help, but it is our job as legislators and as the Government to set the tone. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, that I always welcome a cricketing metaphor: to follow through on that, I know that is the way to the boundary.

A number of noble Lords made the point about resources and the displacement effect of resources. I want to come back to that in Committee. But my main point is to say that the Government take this very seriously. We have no investment in these codes of ethical guidance being ineffectual or failing, or undermining the whole purpose of the Bill. We want to get this right and we will work closely with your Lordships to do so. We are all on the same side. I was going to say we all share the same scepticism. Scepticism is the wrong word, but we share many of the same concerns that this may not achieve either what we want or as much as we want. We will certainly come back to that.

I turn now to the national security services. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, for her observations and I want to reassure her, and the security services generally, that the Government take very seriously the points that she raises about the sensitivity and the vulnerability of this and how significant it is for national security. But I am pleased that she said she thought the arrangements we have set out are adequate. I also want to thank my noble friend Lord Beamish, who I know, with the Intelligence and Security Committee, has done a lot of work on this to get us to where we are. The Government believe we are in a stable place from which to go forward in a way that both protects national security, including protected information about national security, and ensures that the security and other services are within the scope of the Bill.

I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, for his comments and drawing on his enormous experience, and also my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti, who has played an important role and spoke with great force about the need to protect national security. I note the observation from the noble Baroness, Lady May, on the possibility that these arrangements may be cumbersome. I take that very seriously, particularly as it comes from, if I may say, someone with her experience and distinction. But the Government think that, as far as the national security services are concerned, we have reached a stable and balanced place.

I will say a word or two about the NHS and the duty of candour, because that has been referred to by a number of people. The intention of the NHS duty of candour is to ensure that providers are open and transparent with people who use their services. This duty of candour is different, as noble Lords know, so we hope it will work in a different way.

I reassure my noble friend Lord Blunkett that the duty of candour will apply to all officials, former and current, even if they have new jobs. I was very interested in the comments made by a number of noble Lords about the no-blame culture, which raise some philosophical questions about our whole approach to this and the efforts of Jeremy Hunt in the NHS.

I absolutely assure the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, that the Bill covers the Post Office. A number of noble Lords have spoken about aspects of the Horizon scandal, and I will certainly write specifically about all the questions that surround Horizon.

A number of Lords also raised the Independent Public Advocate. I am very clear that the Government support—I think the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, was very politely questioning this—and welcome the role of the IPA as an extremely important early intervention for victim support. I discussed it with my Commons colleague, Minister Davies-Jones, this morning, and I am meeting Cindy Butts tomorrow. We are very committed to this and we absolutely recognise—as I think I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson—that a role for the IPA in these situations will be enormously helpful in achieving what I regard as one of the most important goals: to help the families to get to the truth quickly. We are not resistant to all that. I look forward to discussing how that will work in practice with many noble Lords.

A number of issues were raised about legal aid. I do not have the time to go through them all. I will just say that the principle we are working with is to try to correct the asymmetry that exists at inquests between public bodies and families and survivors. That is what we will seek to achieve, not just through the provisions for legal aid, which I am happy to discuss in more detail—I am very happy to meet the noble Lord, Lord Bach, to talk about it further—but through the constraints on public bodies to use legal representation in a proportionate and responsible way that does not place onerous duties on families, the bereaved and survivors.

I turn quickly, in the two or three minutes left to me, to two or three more important issues. On whistleblowing, the prediction that the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, made of how I would respond was correct: we are about to launch a consultation very soon—not “in due course” but very soon. I want to defend where we stand on this. We are talking here about whistleblowing in the public sector, but all noble Lords know that there are many concerns about whistleblowing in the private sector. They may not be quite the same, but the Government are concerned about protecting whistleblowers across the board. That is what we hope to achieve through the work of my colleagues in the Department for Business and Trade and a number of other things. I am afraid that we want to wait for that, but I am very happy to continue to discuss it.

The principle of the role of whistleblowers is already mentioned in the way the Bill is crafted and how the code of ethics is set out—I will not set it out now, in the interest of time. We believe that we have addressed the question of whistleblowing in the way we have drafted the Bill, but we will take it forward for both the public and private sectors. That is our intention and what I hope we will do.

The Hicks campaign was discussed by the noble Lord, Lord Alton. My noble friend Lady Levitt met with my noble friend Lady Kennedy; I would be delighted also to meet with my noble friend Lady Kennedy. The Hicks campaign goes to what I think is one of the hearts of the matter: if families cannot get to the truth quickly, accountability and consequences will not follow. The truth is the foundation stone on which accountability and consequences follow.

I have run out of time. I will just say one or two other things. In relation to Northern Ireland, I want to reassure my noble friend Lady Ritchie that the duty will automatically apply in the limited number of inquests that will resume as a result of the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill. I can reassure her that we are working closely in discussion on how this duty of candour work will be taken up through the legacy commission.

I really am out of time now, but I promise to write on a number of other issues, including misleading Ministers and the destruction of documents and police records. On the extension of this duty to subcontractors, the Government are very open to thinking about that further. We will talk about self-incrimination and the interaction with FOI, which we feel we are in a good place on but are very happy to discuss. We will come back to some of the issues that my noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, raised around the harm threshold. I will also write about historic injustices, command responsibilities and the obligations on parliamentarians.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is in an unusual place. I looked up and saw that her seat was empty.

I will write about how we arrive at our views on public bodies in scope, including universities and financial services. I am sorry that it has been a bit rushed, but I hope that I have dealt with some of the issues, and I promise to deal with the others in writing. I look forward to engaging with all noble Lords at Committee stage. I beg to move.

Bill read a second time.

Moved by

[Lord Lemos]

That the bill be committed to a Committee of the Whole House, and that it be an instruction to the Committee of the Whole House that they consider the bill in the following order:

Clauses 1 and 2, Schedule 1, Clauses 3 to 11, Schedule 2, Clause 12, Schedule 3, Clauses 13 to 16, Schedule 4, Clauses 17 to 19, Schedule 5, Clause 20, Schedule 6, Clauses 21 to 28, Title.

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

I beg to move.

Amendment to the Motion

Moved by

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not want to put myself in the doghouse, so I will only be a few minutes. This form of amendment was the only way I could raise the issue that I want to raise, which is, of course, to call on the Government to give us a list of the issues the Commons did not have time to consider. I want to talk about why it did not have time to consider them.

I listened to every speech today, and it is absolutely clear to me that there will be lots of amendments from this House going to the Commons. The purpose of raising the issue in this way is to strengthen the role of the elected Members of the Commons at the expense of the Government. I will make two or three general points, and then I will relate these points to the Bill.

In the Commons on Second Reading, every Bill is guillotined. It calls it a programme Motion. It covers up, and all the Bills are dealt with that way. We started that in 1997, and I freely admit that, on reflection, it was one of the mistakes we made. Governments always want to boast about the number of Bills they pass, which is done at the expense of scrutiny, because they make the programme Motion so tight. It is so tight that areas of Bills are left unscrutinised. So, the Bills arrive in our House with inadequate scrutiny. We end up sending more amendments back to the Commons than would otherwise be the case. Then, when they get to the Commons, the Government in the Commons—not here, of course—blame the Lords for MPs having to do more work on what we have sent back, leading them to call for reform of this House. When we return amendments to the elected Members, they are limited by the programme Motion on the time they can spend on what we send back. By the way, the programme Motion has been changed for the Bill; it is now back to January.

Elected Members need more time for scrutiny. The Government have to return to Parliament some of the power they have taken away with programme Motions designed to fit in more Bills, rather than better Bills. All I am asking for is a list from the Government of what they have not allowed to be scrutinised, and to put back the buck where it belongs: with the Government. I am not complaining about the Commons here.

I first raised this issue about a decade ago, but I accepted, on the information I got, that it was too complicated. On 16 July, I attended the Lord Speaker’s lecture in the River Room and I raised again the fact that we should have a note of what has not been discussed when a Bill arrives in this House that was in the previous House. There was support on that evening, so I decided I had better do something about this. This Bill is the first opportunity, but it can be done on every Bill, as I have informed my noble friend.

On 5 August, the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, who regrets he cannot be here today, made exactly the same point in a letter to the Times, based on his former experience as the clerk to the Commons. On 14 July, right towards the end of the Session, when the Commons got to Report, which it had been waiting for from November last year, it was allowed a four-hour debate. There were three Divisions during that debate on issues that the time allowed. Then at 6.10 pm, Hansard records:

“Proceedings interrupted (Programme Order, 3 November 2025).


The Deputy Speaker put forthwith the Questions necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded at that time”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/7/26; col. 872.]


What was that business after four hours? That programme Motion, forthwith, meant that 10 new clauses, six schedules and over 70 amendments went into this Bill on the nod. We are not talking about how the Commons did not have time to do the odd clause; 10 new clauses, six schedules and over 70 amendments were approved on the nod because of the guillotine Motion. Now it is over to us.

All I am saying is we should have a list. The buck stops with the Government; it is the Government, not the Members. It is quite simple to have, so that we know what has not been debated, because the incentive, therefore, down the other end is to demand more time on the Bills so that there is less work to come back to after we have done our job. I beg to move.

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

My Lords, you are not quite done with me yet. This is quite an unusual Motion and, as I understand it, it is about not only this Bill but the general scrutiny of legislation in the House of Commons. The entirety of the Bill was considered in a Commons Public Bill Committee in the usual way and again by the whole House on Report. In the Commons, the selection of proposed amendments for debate and for decision is not a matter for the Government, but all selected amendments were debated in that House in that House’s usual way.

Both Houses work differently and they have their own procedures and practices. It is not for this House nor the Government to criticise those proceedings in the other place, as I am sure noble Lords would not want them to comment on the way we conduct our business. I hope, therefore, that the noble Lord feels able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My noble friend was not listening to what I said. The Government do the programme Motion, not the Members. It is the Government who propose the guillotine. It is the government Motion that puts the dates down and the times allowed—the Government, not the Members. The Members agree it because it is on a three-line Whip, and the Government decide whether to make a long Motion with more time or a short one with less time. It is the Government who do it—and every Bill is covered, by the way. Look at Commons Hansard.

I am not criticising the Commons; we are not allowed to do that. The point is that the Members need to be strengthened against the Government. Do not forget that the Government are in charge of both Houses. The programme Motion still applies; when we have made our amendments to this Bill they will go back to the Commons to be delivered under the programme Motion. The Commons will have maybe an hour or 90 minutes to look at what we said, and there will be complaints such as, “Oh, it’s the Lords again. We need to reform them”. The Government Whips will be saying that to Labour Members who will be complaining about the work we are sending them.

It is about time we got a bit of candour, openness and transparency on this issue. It is true that I tabled this amendment before the end of July, and the Government saw the amendment and withdrew the Motion. That is why it has only just appeared. I was asked whether I would do it on another Bill; I said that I proposed to do it on every Bill, simply because it has got to that point, with the pressure on us and the deliberations in the other place about this place, because we are following the rules to do scrutiny, and do not have guillotines or programme Motions, and have to look at what we need to concentrate on. What we need to concentrate on is what the Commons have not been allowed to, because the Government have taken the time away for them to do the job properly.

At this time, I am tempted to divide the House, but I will not. I would ask the Minister to go and look at Commons Hansard and get better briefed. The Government have had at least five weeks’ warning of the amendment, because they saw it on the Order Paper, and the commitment Motion was withdrawn in late July. I have not done anything about it. The letter from the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, was complete news to me. He regrets that he cannot be here this evening; otherwise, he would be speaking in support. I am coming back on this, but I beg leave to withdraw.