Employment Bill [Lords]

My right hon. Friend knows that he and I have great mutual respect, admiration and all the rest of it, but that does not mean to say that he is right in this case. [Interruption.] Neither he nor I is a lawyer, so we have a big advantage. It is precisely because lawyers clashed on the matter in the first place that we ended up with the ASLEF decision going to the industrial tribunal. The tribunal made its decision, but it was overturned at the European court, and that was not because lawyers disagreed over some academic legal exercise. Sometimes, lawyers disagree about the most profound issues that affect real people's lives. That is what we are talking about. If the Bill were definitely a plus plus, I would happily be on the same side as my hon. Friend the Minister and my right hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney). The problem is that there is a real concern that the law is not workable, which is the real difficulty. If it is not workable, and it does not allow a trade union to exercise what the House wants it to exercise, we are not writing good law. It is the duty of this House not to quibble about what lawyers say—I agree with my right hon. Friend on that—but to quibble about what the law will do in practice. That is the issue before us.