Lord Harper (Con)

My Lords, having listened to this debate, I am struck that there seems to be a fair bit of consensus. Thinking back to the arrangement of business discussion we had about the pace before this debate, I have listened to the number of people who quoted Kim Leadbeater and her uncomfortableness about making these decisions on Zoom. It strikes me that if she had followed through on that uncomfortableness and put into the Bill a clear presumption that these decisions should be taken face to face, with some exceptions that I will elaborate on in a minute, we would not have needed this debate and we would be moving at a faster pace. There is perhaps a lesson there for the noble and learned Lord: if more cognisance had been taken about some of these concerns at an earlier stage, we would have moved at a faster pace. The only reason why these amendments exists, why we have debated them and why the noble Lord, Lord Birt, referenced how important a decision this is to get right is that this issue has not already been addressed. I will just leave that there as a possible reason why there are as many amendments as there are to this lengthy Bill and why the debate is necessary: it is because it has not already been done. I will leave that for noble Lords to think about.