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Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly because we all want to hear what the Minister will say. I find it difficult to follow the noble and learned Lord on this point, as on earlier points, where he seems to have an—I shall use a word that the Minister used a while back—ideological objection to tribunals, which, at least for the past 40 years since the passing of the Tribunals and Inquiries Act 1958, have been part of the judicial system. They may be called administrative tribunals for convenience, although that is hardly an appropriate description for many of them that decide disputes between one individual and another, as employment tribunals do, generally, it is thought to the satisfaction of employers and employees. Nobody suggests that they are somehow inferior to something that is called a court. I suggest that the noble and learned Lord is indicating a kind of hangover from the days of that not very good Lord Chief Justice Lord Hewart who in 1930 wrote a book called The New Despotism because he regarded anything other than the courts deciding disputes as despotic, unjust and unworthy of our consideration. However, that has not been so for the past 40 years, and with the membership and the attention paid to training there is no reason why tribunals should not do the job that the Government give them in this Bill.