Lord Harper (Con)

I shall speak briefly to the three amendments that I have tabled in this group, to start off with. First, Amendment 472A would slightly tighten up the requirement for the panel to speak to the person’s proxy, when they have a proxy. Currently, as the Bill is drafted, they may speak to the person’s proxy, but I think that they should speak to the person’s proxy. There are no criteria set out about how they make that distinction. Given that the person’s proxy will have signed the declarations that kick off this process, they should speak to them. I do not anticipate it being a very long conversation, but it is essential that they do so. Amendments 495D and 496D reference the appeal mechanism in Clause 18 and set out a time limit in line with normal tribunal and administrative appeals—so somebody has to appeal against the panel’s notification of the refusal of the grant of certificate within 10 calendar days. I shall not labour the point, but it is just sensible to have a time limit to make sure that there is a clear process. I had intended to limit my remarks to that, but I have done the dangerous thing of actually listening to the debate, and I wanted to reference my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough’s amendment. It came out in the contributions of the noble Baronesses, Lady Fox and Lady Hayter—a perfectly reasonable difference about exactly where we need to have transparency and balances against privacy. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, is perfectly at liberty to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, and she obviously does, but I was surprised that she appeared to take against him for the temerity of even tabling his amendment. She said she was shocked. The presumption in the Bill as drafted, as far as I read it, is that in Schedule 2 the panels are to determine referrals in public; that is their default procedure. I give way to the noble Baroness.