Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)

I thank the Minister for his answers to the questions that we posed. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, for his support for the amendment, my noble friend Lord Davies and, particularly, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, whom I am delighted to see back in the Chamber and, earlier today, chairing the Joint Committee on Human Rights, as excellently as ever. I am afraid I must let the Minister down gently. First, he said the use of “judgments” in the amendment was wrong, because the employment tribunal makes findings, and this was at the heart of his defence. If he looks carefully, he might find that a court would construe judgment in this section of the Act to include all findings and decisions of the tribunal, because that is exactly the word that is used in relation to the employment tribunal. The Minister’s second reason was that they are having discussions with the MoJ, and the MoJ is having discussions with the judges; there are no timelines, no dates, no indication of what is going to be said, but noble Lords should feel reassured by that. I am afraid that is a warm bath of words. The long and short is that the resource implications of publishing these decisions are limited because we know that all these judgments are provided electronically, because that is the practice—one needs to look only at the immigration decision practice direction. So I do not accept that reason; it is very easy for them to be published, and the cost of it would probably be less than we spend on asylum hotels in a day or two. For those reasons, I say to noble Lords that it is surely a right to get the facts about decision-making on human rights grounds out there for the public and journalists to see. To adopt the phrase of the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, let us let the sunlight in. I wish to test the opinion of the House.