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Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords. I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, for his kind remarks on my new role. As noble Lords have acknowledged, I sought to keep people involved in all the twists and turns and deliberations and discussions that have gone on within the Government; they will know that part of the reason for the postponement last week was that we wanted to ensure that my right honourable friend Jacqui Smith and my right honourable friends who have been involved with the terrorism attacks had the time to consider this properly. I am very grateful to all noble Lords who enabled us to do that. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, is right: it is possible for the Government to move a Motion in another place to delay the fall of this Bill on 19 July—I am told it may be 20 July. However, our understanding of the way in which that would work, and I appreciate that we are in uncharted territory to some degree, is that such a move would have to be in order to achieve something. I have to ask the question of your Lordships’ House: delay in order to do what? That is my difficulty.