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Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am always reluctant to sound a discordant note when it comes to an intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, not only because I admire the maturity of his judgment, but also because we can win a vote in your Lordships' House these days only with the co-operation of his party; so, for diplomatic in addition to jurisprudential reasons, I like to harmonise with the noble Lord. I have great difficulty with the amendment, because, on balance, I am inclined to take a different position from that of the noble Lord. However, it is a very fine balance, and, perhaps on a different day or in a different month, I might have come to a different conclusion. My view is that if there is a dispute of fact, it will be heard by the first-tier tribunal. It will take a view on the facts. If the matter is appealed to the upper tribunal on a point of law, it does not exclude the upper tribunal taking facts into account if the decision on the facts by the first-tier tribunal is unreasonable or perverse. So there will be circumstances in which the facts will still be in play in an upper tribunal. For those reasons, I have come down on balance to the view that, on this occasion, the provisions in the Bill are satisfactory, but I say that with the greatest respect to the noble Lord.