Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I wish to ask the Minister exactly what the words "pared down" mean. That was the Government's description of what they have done to the proposals included in the draft Bill in this respect. In this instance, "pared down" appears to mean omitted in their entirety, rather than anything that could satisfactorily be described using that term. I am curious to learn exactly why the Government have thought again. In 2007, a clear commitment was given that the Government would surrender some Executive power, and judicial appointments was one of the 12 areas explicitly mentioned. The 2008 draft Bill made some explicit proposals in this area: it proposed that the Lord Chancellor's role be reduced by removing his power to reject or require reconsideration of selections made by the Judicial Appointments Commission for all judicial offices below the High Court; it proposed to remove the requirements for the Lord Chief Justice to consult the Lord Chancellor or obtain his agreement before exercising functions such as deploying judiciary to certain leadership posts; it proposed to place new duties on the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chief Justice, the JAC and the selection panels to ensure that selection processes are fair, transparent, efficient, flexible, proportionate and effective and to have regard to the JAC's need to act independently; and it proposed to place new duties on the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice to encourage diversity in judicial appointments. The only thing that has remained from that list is the removal of the Prime Minister from the process, but as I suspect the Prime Minister has never actively intervened in this process, other than on the express advice of the Lord Chancellor, that is, in effect, a cosmetic change. The only argument that I could advance that the Government may have for dropping these changes is the opposition from the Joint Committee on the Draft Constitutional Renewal Bill, which expressed a view that to introduce reforms at this stage might create an imbalance in the proposals contained in the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. That might be an argument, were it not for the fact that the Government have already rejected the Joint Committee's views. The Government response to the Committee's report clearly stated that they do""not accept the overall view of the Committee"." However, the response also stated that the Government""remains committed to nearly all the proposals seen by the Joint Committee"." That commitment seems to have lasted barely a year before this paring down, which is, in effect, the removal of most of the changes to the Executive power of the Government in this area of judicial appointments. I simply seek an explanation from the Government as to why they have changed their view. Why have they decided not to proceed with that which they promised?