It occurs to me to ask the noble Lord whether there have been any consultations with the judiciary about this aspect. I assume that that may have been the case. Presumably the judiciary will have
a view on the imposition of a new burden on it. We talked about the new burdens doctrine earlier this evening as regards the costs of some of the proposals in the Bill on local government and whether they will be met. From a local government perspective I cannot say that I was very thrilled with the Minister’s response to that; he seemed rather to ignore it. However, this is a different sort of new burden—one placed on the courts system. That being the case, one would have imagined that this would have been discussed with the judiciary at some level. Has the noble Lord any knowledge of such discussions taking place, or were any representations made as a result of consultations on the Bill?