Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 67 in my name, in which I have sought to bring back the role of the High Court judge. The complexity of this group of amendments is shown here, but I thought that it could be done with one amendment rather than the number of amendments that my noble friend Lord Carlile had to table. I think that this debate shows many different things. Not least, we have heard quotes about how the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, has changed his mind over time. Others in the Chamber have done so as well, depending on the situation and the specific piece of legislation. We need to give much more consideration to how this Bill will work in practice; this is one of the fundamental issues. I was disappointed when the High Court judge was removed from the process, because that had given me a level of reassurance. I felt that it gave authority and integrity to the process. On where we are now, as other noble Lords have said, the toing and froing of this part of the Bill is very difficult. In another place, two-thirds of the debates on the Bill took place with the High Court judge as part of the process. If the noble and learned Lord was minded to bring that back in, it would yet again change a huge part of the Bill. I thank the noble and learned Lord for meeting me before Christmas, when we had a very interesting discussion on one of the areas I am very concerned about, which is coercion, specifically coercion of disabled people. I am not minded to think that the panel is strong enough to cope with not just the number of cases that they may have to deal with but actually being able to spot some of the things that we have talked about. I have amendments on coercion; I also have amendments on the appointment process of those panel members, which I will not debate now. I know that the noble and learned Lord and I disagree on whether this is the safest Bill in the world. This is not the time for me to ask who has provided independent verification of that, apart from the Bill’s sponsors, but one thing we have to talk about is how we can make the Bill safe.