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Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

My Lords, my noble and learned friend has rendered the House and, more widely, those outside a signal service. Every minute of his speech was properly taken up in revealing a matter of great constitutional importance that is of great importance to all of us who are concerned with due process and the machinery of justice. I remind the House that in the Committee on the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, which has just been completed, Ministers were at pains, time after time, to assert their confidence in and admiration for the magistrates’ courts. In these days of joined-up government, I hope the Minister who will reply will tell us why the Government are attaching such importance to bypassing the magistrates’ courts in this important jurisdiction.