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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, I intervene briefly because I cannot look at this from the point of view of an academic lawyer or the problems that have arisen in the past. I look at it as it stands, or indeed from the point of view of the Appellate Committee of your Lordships’ House—I have only had the privilege of appearing before it, that is all. My appreciation of what goes on there is of absolutely no interest to anybody. But I am a little worried. If the law changes, are you really going to be put out in the interests of doing justice, broadly? I cannot put it another way. It seems to me to go against the grain—although if it goes with the grain of the academics, I could not care less. I am interested in justice, not the interests of the academics. There is a distinction to be drawn between a development in the law and the development of the means of getting evidence to enforce it. That is an important distinction. It should never be foreclosed upon by the Appellate Committee of the House. It has not done so and I do not suppose that it will do so, but would it and where does this lead us? I am not asking these questions to be difficult or tiresome; I simply do not understand that this will, in the end, deliver what I understand as plain justice.