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Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill [Lords]

I shall not go down the route that the hon. Gentleman suggests, except to say that I am sure his party is relieved not to be the recipient of the recent defection. The system is quaint and old-fashioned but it works. We feel strongly that if something works well, we should retain it. Why build a system on the basis of one size fits all? Why not have some flexibility? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The cost of trying to fix it will be considerable. The current system costs approximately £5 million. Getting rid of the general commissioners and the clerks, setting up the new system with judges and bringing it into the tribunal system, with professional clerks who have no local knowledge and sit in regional centres, will cost perhaps two and a half times as much as the current system. A cost of roughly £5 million could increase to £12.5 million unnecessarily. Will that result in the taxpayer and consumer getting a better service? The answer is manifestly no. The consumer will have to take a tax appeal to a system that is far more formal and much more remote and costly. Schedule 6 contains a list almost a mile long of all the different tribunals that the Bill affects. One sort of tribunal should not be included. We make a plea to the Minister, even at this late stage, to listen to the general commissioners. They say that their system works extraordinarily well and that they do a superb job for our constituents. We ask the Minister to listen to them and exempt them, even at this late stage. If my party is elected to government in the next couple of years—