Lord Higgins
Main Page: Lord Higgins (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Higgins's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord McNally
My Lords, one problem with treating Parliament as a group of grown-ups is that such exercises will be open to abuse. The Government have never said that this would happen. What the civil servants did, quite properly, in their impact assessment was put forward a range of possibilities. Throughout the Bill—and I presume now that we are moving to Report he will continue on his merry way—the noble Lord has been looking at worst-case scenarios, saying that worst-case scenarios are inevitable and therefore, “Woe is me”. That is not what the impact assessment is about. It is about trying to take an intelligent and rational view, but, as I have said before, a view that these are not inevitable. This impact assessment is not an almanac; it is a look at a range of options that could happen. As such, it was a reasonable way of approaching the task ahead.
Lord McNally
He is certainly my friend. I will leave the nobility to the opinion of the House.