Lord German (LD)

My Lords, I rise to defend lawyers. I do not why I should be doing this, but it struck me to do so here, as it did on the previous set of amendments. In Committee, the Minister assured us that “the list of reasonable excuses in this clause is non-exhaustive””—[Official Report, 8/7/25; col. 1287.] and that legitimate activity should not be captured. However, relying on ministerial assurances of the good sense and discretion of the CPS is insufficient when it comes to framing criminal law. That is why it has to be represented in the Bill or by regulation, or some other way, that we are not talking about that here. I advise the noble Lord, Lord Harper, that it is very difficult to find sufficient lawyers to deal with the case load that is before us, which is affecting the backlog as well, of course. I will not go into the reasons why that has happened, but it is certainly not easy. The actual penalty would be 14 years’ imprisonment, if a lawyer was caught in it, so it is a very serious matter. If we fail to include explicit protection, we risk imposing deterrents on the exercising of proper legal practice in this field of the law. I support my noble friend Lady Hamwee in that objective in her amendments. I want to speak to government Amendment 11 because while we may have had a different agenda of items, which my noble friend was talking about, at least I think I know what I am talking about here. I know that razor blades on safety razors are particularly dangerous. There are ways in which you can deal with that matter but there is also the alternative of some form of electric device, which can do the job as well, as we know. You might need a wire, but you can also operate them by battery; those ones are much cheaper. I can assure the House that that is my personal experience in this Palace, when you come from a different part of the country from London. However, I would like to know what explanation there will be for how people can shave. The Red Cross has raised that issue and I am sure that the Government have an answer.