My Lords, I am again grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, for his support on this set of amendments.
I am slightly disappointed by my noble friend’s response. The reason is this. Lawyers are extremely jealous of their territory. When the Small Business Commissioner decides to say something critical of the law without having specific powers built into the Act, he will come under considerable criticism. There will be a danger that he will flunk the issue. These are tricky, difficult issues; they are not easy. There are always two sides to the argument, but we need someone who has the responsibility to speak out on specific issues, and the legal issue is one where a specific duty is important. Otherwise, I can see it being shuffled to the side and put into the pile of complaints that are too difficult to deal with. The commissioner will say, “Let us leave that, because we shall only have trouble, we will only have the lawyers getting after us for interfering with due process”—my noble friend even referred to the question of due process in her response.
I shall reflect a bit further on this but of course, in the mean time, for this afternoon, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.