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Judicial Appointments Order 2008

My Lords, I thank the Minister in particular for his admirable brevity in introducing the order. I wish to say a word or two about timing. The Minister will know that when we originally discussed when we would debate the order, we agreed that it was to be in the dinner hour. Then the dinner hour ceased to exist and it was to be at the end of business. However, we were all assured that the end of business would be somewhat earlier than it turned out to be, which is rather unfortunate. I do not know whose fault that is. If it is the fault of the Government Whips Office, I shall get my revenge in the usual way in due course. It may be the fault of the usual channels. I have been part of the usual channels and I know that sometimes they get things wrong. It may be my own fault in naively accepting the original deal as to when the order would be debated. Whatever has happened, it is unfortunate that we have had to delay dealing with the order as much as we have, particularly as we were assured that it would happen somewhat earlier. I turn to the substance of the order. Like my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, I, too, was grateful for a very clear Explanatory Memorandum. Sometimes when one gets an order one cannot understand it at all. One turns to the Explanatory Memorandum but is left in even greater confusion about what is going on. On this occasion, the whole thing was clear and we were grateful for that. Secondly, and again like my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, we were grateful for the level of consultation that took place on this order, particularly in the light of some of my past comments to the Minister about consultation on Titan prisons, or whatever. That a large number of bodies were consulted, both within government and outside in the voluntary sector, is listed in paragraph 7.7 of the Explanatory Memorandum. We are also grateful that the Government took some note of the consultation that took place, in that a point that the CBI put to them about whether certain fellows of ILEX might not have enough experience to sit on employment tribunals was taken into account. I understand that the CBI was concerned about another tribunal, and on that occasion—I forget which, but the noble Lord may be able to remind me—the Government did not accept their concerns. Will the Minister deal with that point, and say whether it would also have been wise to have listened to the CBI on that concern? Having said that, we have no objection to the order.