Member

If noble Lords believe that this enabling power will be used to somehow increase legal aid rates or increase the payments for private prosecutions, then I must confess I have a London Bridge to sell you. Clearly, this is an enabling power intended to bring down the reasonable rate of remuneration paid to those who undertake private prosecutions. The result, I am afraid, will be adverse to the interests of the many companies which bring private prosecutions—for example in the retail trade, with regard to intellectual property, and in respect of fraud—but more particularly the many charities, and there are many, which rely upon this mechanism to protect not only their funds but their reputations.