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Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill [Lords]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time. This has been called a heterogeneous Bill and that is a reasonably accurate description. It will create a simplified statutory framework for tribunals, improving access to justice in many ways and establishing a platform for future reform. It will strengthen the independence of tribunals by separating them from the departments whose decisions they are reviewing. It will increase consistency of procedure and rules and it will deliver efficiency savings by, for instance, allowing the tribunal judiciary to sit more readily in other jurisdictions. It will thus enable us in a number of ways to deliver better services to users. The enforcement provisions will create a consolidated code of enforcement agent law, bringing much greater clarity and removing scope for abuse. The Bill will allow us to create a simplified fee structure that will reward enforcement agents up front to discourage abuse. It will provide debtors with a range of remedies when an enforcement agent breaches the new code, and it will create an enhanced and extended certification scheme for enforcement agents, paving the way to independent licensing by the Security Industry Authority. The Bill contains a number of measures for debt management and relief, which will come to the assistance of debtors when that is desirable. It also contains what I think and hope from our most recent debate will be a balanced system between the owners of potentially looted goods and museums that need an element of immunity. In a number of other ways scattered around the Bill are improvements to access to justice broadly. In the words of ““1066 And All That””, it is, I suggest, ““a Good Thing””. I am very grateful for the way in which members of the Committee and those who have taken part today have applied themselves in the most amiable way to trying to get the best out of the Bill and to helping the Government to make sure that it is as strong and effective an aid to improving access to justice as it could possibly be. So good natured have almost all the exchanges been that I think the worst allegation that has been made about the Government in the whole of the Bill’s passage through the House was that the Minister leading for the Government was a trendy dresser. I commend the Bill to the House.