Press Matters

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

The Government have set no limits on the consultation process so far as costs are concerned. Clearly, the question of conditional fees will arise in the context of whether Section 40 should be brought into force. The noble Lord is quite right that it is important, while bearing in mind the victims of press abuse, to ensure a fair, acceptable and level playing field in issues between the press and powerful individuals. The press should not be coerced by the issue of cost into not reporting in a fair, open and effective manner.

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, while it might not be unreasonable for the noble and learned Lord not to give a view on the matter raised by the noble Baroness at this stage, will he confirm that the Government will at least take it into consideration before they reach any conclusion as a result of the consultation?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I have no doubt that that will be taken into account, as will the general conduct of IPSO, when it comes to determining and reporting on the terms of the consultation itself.

Offender Rehabilitation: Entrepreneurship Training

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lords, Lord German and Lord Marks, have referred to their regret, which I share, about the departure of Mr Gove, who made what seemed to me a very promising start, in contrast to the dreadful years under his predecessor, in looking at the position of prisoners. It is a case of being gone but not forgiven, I suppose, by the party opposite, or at any rate its leadership.

Concerns about the Prison Service which form the background to this timely debate have been raised with troubling frequency during the six years that I have served in this House, and before. It is perhaps tedious, but nevertheless necessary, to remind ourselves of the size of the prison population—it encompasses some 86,000 people at any one time—of the problems of overcrowding and understaffing, of violence and drug abuse, and of the high rates of re-offending, all of which were touched on during Questions this week, as they have been with depressing regularity over the years. It is as well to recall, too, the high proportion of prisoners with one or more mental health disorders, and low levels of literacy and numeracy and of any engagement with further education.

Today’s welcome debate draws attention to one aspect of penal policy that has been the subject of discussion and of some developments in recent years. However, we need to be mindful that while promoting entrepreneurship may help some prisoners to return to society and lead a more useful and rewarding existence, just as in society as a whole, the majority are likely to derive more benefit from being equipped with the basic skills, enhanced wherever possible, to take their place in the labour market as well-trained contenders for employment.

A report of the Prisoners’ Education Trust in 2013 stressed the need to promote both employability skills and what it termed soft skills, such as a positive attitude, communication skills and reliability and, while referring to self-employment, stressed the experience of three prisons in helping offenders to acquire particular skills in demand in particular trades and areas. The business department published its Evaluation of Enterprise Pilots in Prisons last October, since when Dame Sally Coates’s review in May this year provided an interesting picture, to be seen alongside the CentreForum report entitled Transforming Rehabilitation? Prison Education: Analysis and Options, published in March. The BIS report highlighted the need for IT access, and the Coates report referred to the glass ceiling beyond level 2 of standard vocational qualifications, noting that a mere 200 achieved level 3 or above in 2014-15, via the Offenders’ Learning and Skills Service, or OLASS, an 85% reduction from 2013, the last year before loans were introduced to pay for courses. The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, rightly referred to concerns over the fragmentation of OLASS’s role under the Government’s present policy. This was even worse than the 42% decline in prisoners taking higher education courses with the Open University after 2011-12 when they had to start self-funding at a cost of £2,700 a module, or £14,800 for a degree.

Dame Sally suggested in a cautionary note that, in relation to the BIS enterprise pilot scheme promoting start-ups by prisoners with support and loans,

“participants needed to be carefully selected to ensure they were able to engage effectively”.

In other words, she implied that there is some scope for entrepreneurship and self-employment, but it will not necessarily be applicable to the majority of prisoners.

The BIS report covered only 58 prisoners from four prisons and noted a lack of connection between providers and the DWP on the issue of benefits. Importantly, and directly relevant to the terms of the motion under debate, BIS analysed the start-ups and loans secured by prisoners looking to progress to self-employment on release. Of 114 prisoners in the north-east, two started businesses without funding; one failed to obtain a loan and another’s application is pending. In a southern prison, of 40 who participated, two began start-ups with the aid of funding, and 19 had loans approved in 2014 and 2015. So the picture is not entirely convincing that, even with support of training, people will necessarily make it into self-employment or business.

CentreForum’s report affirms these worrying trends. The percentages of institutions needing improvement in education rose from 50% to 75% between 2011 and 2015, while the proportion engaged in prison education courses dropped from 42% in 2008-9 to 23% in 2014. At the basic level below level 2, participation rates improved but, worryingly, the rise was much higher in subjects other than English and maths, which were the Government’s priorities, having regard to the low levels of literacy and numeracy, clearly key to future employment prospects. CentreForum also points to Ofsted reports showing a steep decline in performance ratings, with the proportion of findings of inadequacy or requiring improvement rising from a bad enough 50% in 2011-12 to 72% in 2014-15. Imagine the outcry if Ofsted’s reports on schools had followed a similar trajectory or reached such heights of inadequacy. The report summarises the position as indicating,

“consistently poor quality provision and a decline in quality over recent years”.

All this is consistent with the NOMS finding of a “stark decline” in purposeful activity outcomes and educational quality, in turn reflected in the stagnation of reoffending rates since 2009. We seem locked into a downward spiral of declining opportunities and outcomes. What appears to be lacking, apart from the basic requirement of adequate funding to secure a safe environment for prisoners and staff, is a properly integrated approach to penal policy across government. This needs to involve the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office, the departments of health, business, and education, and the courts. It needs much greater sharing of experience, perhaps by extensive use of peer review, and it needs a determined effort to reduce prison numbers without which airy aspirations of a rehabilitation revolution, or worthy and desirable objectives, such as increasing entrepreneurship and self-employment by prisoners, are unlikely to be achievable. I hope that the noble and learned Lord will be able to persuade his colleagues in the department that these are achievable objectives but that they require a degree of commitment that is yet to appear in government policy.

Civil Legal Aid (Merits Criteria) (Amendment) Regulations 2016

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin my response to the noble and learned Lord’s address by doing something quite unprecedented in my brief parliamentary lifetime. I offer twofold congratulations to the Government, first on winning a case in the Court of Appeal when they had been challenged and, secondly on their very constructive response to the situation by making adjustments to the system which had been subject to challenge in the way that the noble and learned Lord has described. It is a sensitive and sensible move and I congratulate the Government on it. I suspect that the hand of the Minister was very much involved in achieving that result.

In the course of the short debate in the House of Commons, the Solicitor-General remarked on the question of reviewing LASPO, as the noble and learned Lord did when I asked a Question this afternoon. The Solicitor-General, Sir Oliver Heald, confirmed what the noble and learned Lord said this afternoon: there is to be a review, given that we are now four and a half years after Royal Assent, but he was not tempted to announce its date today. The noble and learned Lord indicated earlier that he is not in a position to do that either at this stage. Nevertheless, it would elicit further compliments from the Opposition Front Bench if we had an indication, as soon as is reasonably feasible, of the date of commencement of such a review. It would do so even more if the Minister could indicate that the review will look as sympathetically as it has on this issue on others affecting access to justice, such as the difficult areas to contend with if you are not represented —debt, welfare, housing and family law—and equally on the impact of the Act and its restrictions to legal aid on the operation of the Courts and Tribunal Service, given the significant increase in the number of litigants in person.

I do not expect the noble and learned Lord to comment on that tonight, because I guess he is not in a position to do so, but I hope he will use his influence on his colleagues in the department to ensure that these things are taken into account when the review is launched and conducted.

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, I hesitated to rise before the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, because I was sure he would have found there was something wrong with this instrument that I had not managed to discover. I am quite touched to find that he agrees with it as much as I do. It is a small but welcome improvement in the legal aid situation which has caused many people a great deal of anxiety. Although I fully recognise that legal aid resources are not—and cannot be— unlimited, their application was not always to the public good. There were many situations in which one party had the benefit of legal aid and the other party could not really afford the costs of privately financing the case. So the position is more complex than it sometimes appears.

The effect of this instrument, as I understand it from the Government’s memorandum, is that about 70 cases a year will attract legal aid which would not otherwise have done so, and about £250,000 has been found from somewhere to ensure that this can be financed. That is welcome news, and it opens up the possibility that there will occasionally be a case which is of real public value—because ultimately it will affect cases brought by other people—or is of fundamental importance to an individual, which would not have got legal aid and would not have been proceeded with, but which will now be satisfactorily dealt with by the courts system. That has to be an improvement, so I welcome the instrument. I also, of course, welcome the review—to which the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, referred, and which the House of Commons Justice Committee, which I then chaired, was particularly keen to see—of a piece of legislation that had such far-reaching effects on access to justice.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Beecham]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have commenced a review of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012; and, if so, when they anticipate that the review will be published.

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)]

My Lords, the coalition Government promised to review Parts 1 and 2 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 within three to five years of its implementation. We remain committed to undertaking that review. The precise timing is under consideration and we will announce our intentions in due course.

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, it is four and a half years since Royal Assent, so it is a little disappointing that the Government have not yet decided when to carry out their promise. I had prepared a response, rather anticipating the Answer that the noble and learned Lord gave. However, today I was telephoned by a young woman in great distress because she is in the middle of a custody case involving her child by someone who is legally represented. There is no case here for legal aid to be granted under the present regime because there is no violence or any suggestion of child abuse. I tried to put her in touch with people who might help. This exemplifies some of the real problems that have arisen as a result of the narrowing of the field in which legal aid applies. Will the noble and learned Lord confirm that the Government will be open to reviewing such areas where legal aid has been withdrawn and will not be adamant about refusing to extend it to cases such as this?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I remind the noble Lord of a Written Answer by my noble friend Lord Faulks some time ago in which he pointed out that the review of LASPO would take place between April 2016 and April 2018, and towards the end of that period. With regard to the case which the noble Lord highlighted, of course I cannot comment on an individual case. However, I would observe that, prior to LASPO coming into force, almost two-thirds of family cases already had at least one unrepresented litigant. Therefore, there has not been a sudden introduction of unrepresented litigants in the context of family courts and family cases since LASPO came into force. However, clearly, when it comes to a review of LASPO, particularly Part 1, we will take into consideration the sort of case that the noble Lord raised.

Prisons

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, since 2010, the number of assaults on prison officers has risen from 3,000 a year to 5,500, with serious assaults doubling. Assaults with weapons on officers and fellow prisoners increased by 30% to 22,195 in six years. The level of self-harming has increased in the last two years by 50% to 34,586. Suicides last year totalled 105. Meanwhile, the number of prison officers has fallen from 18,500 to just over 15,000 in the last four years. When will the Government recognise that we have a crisis in our prisons and that it is necessary to reduce the overall prison population—including those on remand, many of whom do not end up with custodial sentences—substantially increase the number of trained staff, provide appropriate medical and other support, and move from housing people in large institutions, which are difficult to manage, to smaller custodial facilities?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

It is recognised that there has been an increase in violence in prisons in the past 10 years or more. It should also be noted that in the period from 2005 to 2015, the number of offenders in prison for violent conduct increased by 29%. So far as resources are concerned, we have already announced, as of 30 June this year, the allocation of an additional £10 million of new funding for prison safety. That funding is to include Pentonville prison. In addition, by March 2017 we expect to find 400 extra staff deployed in consequence of the funds being made available, as I mentioned before.

County Court Judgments

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

It can be squared by defendants entering an appearance into the court process and putting forward, in any appropriate manner, the defence that they have to the claim. In these circumstances, it would appear that the system works equitably. I point out again the need to balance the interests of claimants, many of which are small and medium-sized enterprises that suffer serious problems of cash flow due to debtors, and the interests of defendants.

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, is the alarming picture reflected in the noble Baroness’s Question not another symptom of what is increasingly a failing civil justice system? Will the Government look at their support for Citizens Advice and other advice agencies as well as—building on the Minister’s last remarks—perhaps publicising the need for people to respond to any such claims and to seek advice where it is available?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

It has to be made clear that resort to the court is the last step in the process of debt recovery, and that those responsible for debts are given notice of their indebtedness and are required to pay. It is only when they fail or refuse to respond to these entreaties that any application is made to the court. In these circumstances, defendants are given ample opportunity and notice to defend their interests.

Civil Proceedings, First-tier Tribunal, Upper Tribunal and Employment Tribunals Fees (Amendment) Order 2016

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2016 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Beecham]

At end insert “but that this House regrets that, notwithstanding the recommendation of the House of Commons Justice Committee that access to justice should prevail over generating revenue when the Government are setting court and tribunal fees, the Government continue to increase the already enhanced fees, which exceed the full cost of the provision of court and tribunal services.”

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, I intended to begin this speech by welcoming the multitasking noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, to his first debate as a Justice Minister. It appears, however, from the published list of departmental Ministers that he is not in fact a Justice Minister but is, in effect, assisting the department. He deserves ministerial ranking within the Ministry of Justice and the House deserves that the spokesman for such a department should be accorded that status. The noble and learned Lord follows in the train of many distinguished Scottish Peers such as the noble and learned Lords, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, Lord Irvine of Lairg, Lord Falconer and Lord Wallace of Tankerness, to name but a few of those who are still with us. I am confident that the noble and learned Lord will not emulate the notorious 18th-century Scottish judge Lord Braxfield. He replied to counsel defending a man charged with sedition who observed that Jesus Christ was, like his client, a reformer:

“Muckle He made o’that—He was hangit”.

There is a biblical injunction which proclaims:

“Justice, Justice shalt thou pursue”.

To this the Government add an addendum: providing that thou canst pay in advance a fee equal to or greater than what would be required to ensure that the full cost or more of court and tribunal proceedings can be recovered for the benefit of the taxpayer. Access to justice, a principle which the Government purport to embrace, is however increasingly treated differently from access to other areas of public provision such as health or education, at least for the time being. Yet access to justice is crucial to the rule of law on which this country properly prides itself. Already eroded by savage cuts in legal aid and advice under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, it is now being eroded by a further round of significant increases in fees.

What makes matters worse is the way in which the Ministry of Justice has handled the issue. The latest round of increases was announced more than a year ago, subject to consultation. One of the most controversial areas has been that of employment tribunal fees, in relation to which the Government had last year commissioned a review, including a report on the impact of their earlier imposition of substantial charges, which they said would be completed by the end of 2015.

As paragraph 56 of the Justice Select Committee report pointed out, the review’s report was stated on 7 October by an official of the department to be in the hands of the Minister and that,

“it was hoped that the Minister’s position would be known by the end of the year”.

It was not. An FOI request for a copy of the report was declined on 29 December, with the comment:

“The review is currently underway and will report in due course”.

Successive requests were made to the then Minister, Mr Vara, on 9 February and 31 March, the latter seeking publication or at least the supply of a copy in confidence to the committee, without success. Nothing transpired and now Mr Vara has expired, politically speaking. Perhaps the Minister could tell us if and when the report will be published, for this is a sensitive and highly contentious area.

There has been, in the committee’s words, a “startling drop” in the number of applications as a result of the imposition of fees of the order of 70%. The committee was disinclined to accept as an explanation for this fall a greater reliance on conciliation, as to which the Senior President of Tribunals said that there was “clear behavioural material” indicating that employers were,

“avoiding engagement with conciliation processes”.

The committee concluded that the existing fee system,

“has had a significant adverse impact on access to justice for meritorious claims”,

not least in relation to claims by pregnant women for detriment or dismissal. What confidence, then, could one have in the range of new and increased fees imposed in this and other areas? There is to be an increase from £410 to £550 for divorce proceedings. Given that there is now no legal aid, this flat-rate charge will impact relatively more harshly on less well-off petitioners, at a time, of course, of acute emotional stress. The President of the Family Division, Sir James Munby, accused the Government of,

“battening on to the fact that there is a captive market”,

and,

“putting up the fees until it becomes another poll tax on wheels”.

Even more objectionable is the astonishing increase of 600% in fees to the Immigration and Asylum Tribunal—the original proposal was 100%, which is steep enough for some of the most vulnerable people here—which is likely, as the Law Society points out, to lead to more people overstaying illegally and risking criminal prosecution. Even under the present system, fees were remitted in only 5,600 cases, out of 41,000 applications. Then we have a 10% increase in the fees for civil claims, increases in fees levied in tribunals such as the general regulatory chamber, the property chamber and the tax chamber, and the particularly invidious increase in the fees for judicial review proceedings, where, after all, the Government themselves might well be the defendant. At the other end of the spectrum, the Justice Committee warned that increases in fees for money claims might well damage this country’s interests as a leading provider of legal and judicial services to foreign litigants, and thereby be self-defeating.

It was interesting to read the speeches of two Conservative MPs when this order was debated in the Commons. In addition to the forensic exposition of the chair of the committee, Bob Neill, John Howell criticised the Government’s failures to discuss changes with the judiciary and to adduce evidence for their proposals. Victoria Prentis endorsed the Justice Committee’s critique and referred to the 31-page guidance booklet provided to claimants seeking fees remission as exemplifying the problem. Research by Citizens Advice has demonstrated that only 29% of employment tribunal applicants were even aware that there was a remission scheme.

This is not the only area of the Ministry of Justice’s responsibilities in which such changes and increases in fees are being made. The Government are proposing substantial increases in probate fees for estates over £50,000, which will increase from a flat rate of £215 on estates over £5,000, to £20,000 on estates of £2 million or more, an increase of 9,200%. Currently the cost of running the Probate Registry is £42.5 million, and the fees produce £41.5 million. Therefore, it virtually pays for itself, and it is disingenuous to suggest that the increase in probate fees is in any way related to full cost recovery. If the Government wish to raise the £250 million they plan to receive from this fee increase, they should do so by adjusting inheritance tax by an appropriate percentage. This would avoid the ludicrous outcome of the new level of fees for an estate of £2 million being the same as for an estate of £20 million or £200 million.

In addition to the impact of the financial changes embodied in this order, we must not forget the issues raised last week when the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, secured a debate on the impact on the rule of law of the cuts imposed on our justice system. One significant area of concern was the growth in the number of litigants in person, which leads to delays, adjournments and longer hearings, substantially reducing the efficiency of the system. These problems are worsened by the reductions in court staff, with full-time equivalent numbers down from 17,829 in 2013-14 to 16,286 in 2015-16, a reduction of 10%.

The Government’s record over access to justice, which stretches back to the coalition period, has favoured the interests of the powerful, from employers to insurance companies and others, as the cuts to legal aid and their actions over fees testify. Moves towards fixed costs in civil claims and clinical negligence cases echo the same approach. It will be interesting to see whether the Prime Minister’s claims for compassionate conservatism translate into action. The Government’s justice policies will provide an early test. I beg to move.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, this is the third time the Lord Chancellor has exercised the power afforded by Section 180 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 to prescribe what we all know now as enhanced court fees—fees which exceed the cost to the Courts & Tribunals Service of doing that for which the fee is being charged. On each occasion, the draft order has attracted, as today, a regret Motion in this House, and each time I have spoken to support that regret Motion. On the last occasion, on 15 March, I was the only speaker in the debate apart from the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, who moved the regret Motion, and the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, who resisted it. Today, alas, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, is no longer in his place, but we are of course lucky enough to have as his replacement the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, who is a personal friend—I hope I am allowed to say this—and indeed a neighbour.

That said, with a new Lord Chancellor now in office—one perhaps not overburdened with previous experience of issues concerning the rule of law and access to justice—I return briefly to some of the things I said about the earlier enhanced court fees orders. First, there is a real case to make for objecting even to the principle of full cost recovery. The justice system exists for the benefit of society as a whole, and one may reasonably question why courts should be any more liable to self-finance than, for example, the police service, the fire service or any other public service. But put that thought aside: enhanced fees go altogether further than mere full cost recovery, and are hugely more objectionable. By definition, they are calculated—in both senses—to make a profit. They amount, realistically, to selling justice—on the face of it, contrary, as we all know, to Magna Carta, but regrettably now sanctioned by Section 180 of the 2014 Act.

As I observed in earlier debates, that Christmas tree of an Act contains 186 sections and 11 schedules, and occupies no fewer than 232 pages of the Queen’s Printer’s copy of the legislation, so it was small wonder that by the time we got to Clause 180, our usually impeccable and meticulous scrutiny of legislation had perhaps become somewhat lax and careless. The Government seek to justify enhanced fees on the basis that they are needed, according to paragraph 7.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum for the previous order,

“in order that access to justice is protected”.

But this rationale is, I suggest, entirely disingenuous, as it effectively turns that vital principle on its head. Of course Her Majesty’s Courts & Tribunals Service must be funded properly, so that it provides access to justice. But it manifestly does not follow that any part of that funding should be achieved by profiteering from certain selected parts of the service, least of all when that profiteering will hinder access to justice by discouraging at least some of those who would otherwise use these selected services.

Lord Dyson, Master of the Rolls, who retires next week—I express the hope here today that his courtesy title will be speedily translated into a full Cross-Bench peerage—in his oral evidence to the House of Commons Justice Committee on enhanced fees, emphasised that access to justice is the critical point here, and that,

“ordinary people on modest incomes … will inevitably be deterred from litigating”.

As the Justice Committee concluded in paragraph 46 of its report,

“the introduction of fees set at a level to recover or exceed the full cost of operation of the court requires particular care and strong justification. Where there is conflict between the objectives of achieving cost-recovery and preserving access to justice, the latter objective must prevail”.

How right it plainly is. As for the particular enhanced fees proposed by this order, I can find no “strong justification” for them, not by reference to the particular services for which it is proposed to exact them, still less by reference to the principle of access to justice. The order is indeed to be regretted. If the House is divided, I shall certainly support the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Keen of Elie]

That matter is the subject of comment in the Justice Committee’s report, and we will respond to it. I again emphasise that from the figures we have it is clear that a large proportion of women qualify under the fees remittance scheme and to that extent have that relief.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate, and I thank the Minister for his reply. He has given something of a hostage to fortune in his reference to employment tribunal fees. It will be surprising—although not, I suppose, impossible—if the Government do not, after having considered this matter for a year so far, come up with some proposals to increase those fees, the extent of which remains to be seen.

It is extraordinary that the Minister made no substantive defence whatever to the criticisms of the process that were made by, among other bodies, the Justice Select Committee. I quote from its report:

“It will be evident from the chronology”,

regarding the time that had elapsed, which I referred to before,

“that there are some inconsistencies in the Government’s account of the progress of its review into the impact of employment tribunal fees. It is difficult to see how a Minister”—

not this Minister—

“can urge his officials to progress a review which they apparently submitted to him 4 months or more previously. And even if Ministers may now be discussing how to proceed … and recognizing that Departments other than the Ministry of Justice have an input into this, there can be no compelling reason to withhold from public view the factual information about the impact of the introduction of employment tribunal fees which will have been collated by the review. There is a troubling contrast between the speed with which the Government has brought forward successive proposals for higher fees, and its tardiness in completing an assessment of the impact of the most controversial change it has made … We find it unacceptable that the Government has not reported the results of its review one year after it began and six months after the Government said it would be completed”.

On that basis, and with respect to the Minister, we can have little confidence in the outcome of that aspect of the matter or in other decisions that have been made. In these circumstances, I wish to test the opinion of the House.