Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

That is a very good question. Judging by the Minister's account, it depends on whether the person wants to sign it, and if they do want to sign it, then they are a civil servant. This is not at all satisfactory. The problem in terms of the courts is that they will try to work out the intention of Parliament and we are trying to get the Minister to put on record what her intention is, but she seems entirely incapable of doing so. She gives the impression that she has some sort of definition to hand, but we cannot work out what it is. She gives examples, but if one attempts the normal case law technique of joining them together to produce a rule, one cannot work out what the rule is that lies behind those examples. This seems to me to be entirely the wrong approach, and if the Joint Committee supported that approach it could not have been in a position to work out what it was doing.