Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)

I am grateful to my noble friend. I draw the Committee back to where we are at the moment: an individual in detention can have 30 minutes’ worth of legal advice very quickly after they have requested it. There may be an issue around take-up. We are monitoring take-up on a regular basis and want to increase that take-up, but that 30 minutes is there. If further advice is required, on the merits test that can be taken forward as of now. My noble friend’s amendment may take that issue wider than that discussion. It is the Government’s objective to speed up claims to get to decisions on asylum. We are doing that through executive action, not legislation, increasing the number of people taking decisions and making it much quicker and fairer, because that is in the public interest, as has been mentioned by all. I do not think we are going to resolve that issue in Committee today. I have tried to set out where I think we are, and my noble friend has tabled his amendment. Serious questions have been raised on these issues by me, by the noble Viscount and by the noble Lord, Lord Empey. I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment, because I believe the Government’s case as I have put it is the right course of action on those issues. If we are going to have even further discussion on the points he has made, we need to have some better information on which to base it, even though I accept that for some members of the Committee, that becomes a matter of principle.