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Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, in fairness to the Government, they did not do what the noble Lord, Lord Martin, suggested. They did not put the whole report on the table and say, ““We will have it””, but chose which bits suited them and left out the part of the report that dealt with legal aid, which we have debated at some length, among other matters. However, that is a little beside the point. I support the noble Lord's amendment, if only because subsection (4), which it seeks to delete, effectively locks and bolts the door to any subsequent change to the provisions on success fees without primary legislation. That is a formidable obstacle. The subsection is unnecessary and the Government could have dealt with the matter in a way that would have allowed them or a subsequent Government to review the situation without primary legislation. The way that the Bill is drafted does not allow that, and for that reason, if no other, I support the noble Lord's amendment.