Charities Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that response, but I am afraid that I remain unswayed in my conviction that this tribunal will be stillborn without effective legal advice and assistance. It really does no good to say that the Attorney-General will take the occasional case. Indeed, it was my own correspondence with the Attorney-General that opened the door to his agreeing to take occasional cases. In correspondence we talked about one or two cases a year. Nor is it any response to the lacuna I am drawing attention to that the Minister has ascertained that, in exceptional cases involving the wider public interest, the taking of counsel’s opinion will be allowed or, in even more exceptional circumstances, representation. I know the workings of the Legal Services Commission very well and I can assure the House that, given its general way of working, the number of cases that will fit those two categories will be minuscule. We are talking about perhaps two or three cases a year. But we are expecting the traffic brought before the tribunals to be hundreds of cases a year, not two or three. So I repeat that this central part of the Bill will not be just impeded, but wholly undermined by the absence of a fund of this sort. Even at this late hour, I am afraid that I do wish to test the opinion of the House. On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 34) shall be agreed to? Their Lordships divided: Contents, 54; Not-Contents, 102