Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)

My Lords, the whole House will be in the debt of the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, for the way in which she has repeated the Statement. She is, palpably and demonstrably, personally invested in this process, and everyone owes her a debt of thanks. She will know that the primary responsibility for oversight of remedial orders falls to the Joint Committee on Human Rights. At its meeting yesterday, it decided that it would look at this remedial order urgently, from a human rights perspective. It would help the committee if the noble Baroness could provide clarity on when she expects the Supreme Court to hear the Dillon appeal. If she does not have that information, will she be good enough to try to establish that, so that we have some idea of what the process will be and how long it will take? Given the impact on grieving families—which, as she said, was raised yesterday in a very moving way in another place—and the effect of justice delayed inevitably being justice denied, can we be assured not just that it will happen “in due course” but that the primary legislation will be in this Session of Parliament? Given that the Government have to deal, 20 years later, with outstanding matters such as the McKerr group of ECHR judgments, will the noble Baroness undertake that they too will be dealt with in the primary legislation, when it is brought forward? Twenty years is a long time to wait to resolve issues raised by the European court.