My Lords, I can quite understand the reason why this particular safeguard or defence in injunctive procedures is to be removed. The noble Lord may rest assured that I am with him as far as the argument goes. I have written to his noble friend and had an answer this morning pointing out that, in normal civil injunctive proceedings, there are a significant number of available defences—depending on how one counts them, 15 or 20 or more. The Bill as it stands would have allowed for three; this will reduce it to two.
I still do not understand, because in his letter to me—which I thank him very much for, and for keeping me in the loop on correspondence generally to do with this Bill—the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, merely said that he did not agree with me. He did not explain why in one set of civil injunctive proceedings under this Bill there will remain two defences, but in any other injunctive proceedings there will be 15 or more. That seems a two-tier approach, so what is the direction of travel in that respect?