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Criminal Defence Service (Information Requests) (Amendment) Regulations 2010

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for bringing these two sets of regulations to the Committee and for his explanation. Like him, I hope that I will not detain the Committee for long in examining what he describes as the final piece in the jigsaw. If it was possible for the whole jigsaw to be put in front of us at once on some occasions, life might be considerably easier. The answer to my first question is presumably very simple, but I genuinely do not know it. The Explanatory Memorandum for the Criminal Defence Service (Information Requests) (Amendment) Regulations 2010 also deals with two other orders, which I take to be negative instruments and the reason why they are not before the House. I would be most grateful if the Minister could confirm that. Secondly, the Minister quite rightly stressed that it was important to be able to have these regulations for the very good reason that it is important to be able to protect the Legal Aid Fund against fraud. Will he tell us his department’s estimates of the levels of fraud in legal aid funding? Is it even possible to make such estimates or are they guesstimates? I remember from my days in social security the great difficulty in ever estimating how much fraud there was, because by its very nature one did not know, but I presume that the department has made some estimates and I should be grateful for advice on that. My second and very minor question relates to the appeals regulations. As the Minister made clear, where the representation authority refuses an application, the individual may appeal first to the staff of the magistrates’ courts and then to the court, but I take it that, even if the court turns that down, it would on certain occasions be possible to appeal beyond the court. I should be grateful for advice from the Minister as to whether that is the case? Having said that, it is not necessary to go back to the debates on the substantive legislation; we all remember those. For the moment, we are dealing merely with the regulations. I have no further questions.