Lord Keen of Elie (Con)

My Lords, I begin with Amendment 20, which deals with Clause 12. First, I am relying on the Explanatory Notes from the Minister’s own department. Where there is a private prosecution and then an award of costs, the costs are assessed by the criminal cases unit in the Ministry of Justice. If there is a dispute—and there should not be, because there are established guidelines, the Senior Courts Costs Office guidelines—it can go to the senior costs judge, who is experienced in addressing these matters. So that is not a problem at all, and there is no real difficulty there. However, the Minister suggested that there was “some evidence at the margins” that people might be overcharging. Well, if you think that there is some evidence at the margins, go away and consult—and if you discover that there is evidence at the margins, come back and we can legislate. But you do not legislate and then go looking for some evidence at the margins: that is simply back to front. I make one further point. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, mentioned that this was money leaving the MoJ. Let us put this into context: 0.18% of the legal aid budget is £3.6 million, and it is not leaving: it is actually a very wise investment by the Ministry of Justice. Investing that very modest sum relieves the Crown Prosecution Service of a vast number of relatively minor prosecutions that would cost a great deal to pursue. So I do not accept that this is somehow “lost money”: it is actually an extremely good investment on the part of the MoJ and it shows results. I appreciate that the issues around Amendment 29 were touched on in the Sentencing Act, but there is no prohibition, subject to the clerks, on us revisiting it if we did not get it right the first time. We now have an ideal opportunity to get it right, and there is no reason why, with sexual and domestic abuse offences, we should not be able to reconcile our sentencing provisions with other serious crimes. So I shall seek to test the opinion of the House on both Amendment 20 and Amendment 29.