Lord Coaker (Lab)

My Lords, I want to respond to a couple of the points that have been made. I agree with the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, but the purpose of the Bill is to expand the remit of the service complaints ombudsman, who can only look at service complaints, to the commissioner who, as my noble friend Lord Beamish pointed out, can also look at thematic and systemic issues—so it is a complete expansion and change of the role. I say again to the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, that we are passing legislation here. The whistleblower amendment is not connected to new Section 340IB. There are two different tiers of somebody coming to the commissioner. There is the first tier, which gives the commissioner all the powers and advantages that noble Lords want: viewing premises, observing, power of entry—all the things laid out in 340IB. That is not in the amendment for the whistleblower. If we pass the whistleblowing amendment, the powers of entry and other powers would not be made available to the commissioner. That is why it becomes a two-tier system, and I suspect that, if noble Lords had the Bill in front of them, they would see exactly the point I am making. I also thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, for his point. Let us say that somebody comes forward as a whistleblower, raising a hugely important thematic issue, and the commissioner says, “I am going to investigate that”. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, pointed out, they cannot do it if the whistleblower says “No, I don’t want you to do it”, because it can be done only with the consent of the whistleblower.