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Liaison Committee

My Lords, I welcome the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. It may not appear from the rather polite minute just how much indignation there was in the committee at the actions of the other place in refusing to set up a Joint Committee. I remember that when the Bill went through this House much of the support for the concept of a scrutiny committee was on the basis that in this House there was particular and specific expertise. The noble Lord, Lord Moser, who is in his place, is one example of those who would have contributed to the work of such a Joint Committee. I hope the other place will think again about this issue, otherwise my solution—having learnt the hard way about how the other place will deal with it—is that we write more specifically into such Bills an insistence that when we are talking about parliamentary scrutiny the other place cannot then redefine that as House of Commons scrutiny. I was very clear when this Bill went through this House that when we talked about parliamentary scrutiny we meant scrutiny by experts in both Houses.