My Lords, I apologise to the House for having been detained in the Moses Room earlier in another debate. Much of what I might have said has been put far better by my colleagues who have signed this amendment, in the shape of my noble friend Lord Trees, the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and my noble friend Lady Deech, who has been incredibly helpful. I thank them very much. I also found the speech of my noble and learned friend Lord Etherton very persuasive on the basic and essential point.
I remind the House of a question I put directly to the Minister in Committee, right at the end, about what happens next. He said:
“I do not want to create a feeding frenzy for lawyers by putting anything in legislation that will increase opportunities for judicial review or any other legal measure.”—[Official Report, 6/7/21; col. GC 294.]
That is what set me thinking about whether or not, in the true construction, this provision increased or decreased the possibility for judicial review. We just heard from my noble and learned friend about that, and about how the European Convention on Human Rights would work. I will not rehearse all the arguments or restate what others have said but it is my settled view that, if we do not restore something that was the law of the land until midnight of 31 December last year and then stopped, there is a strong probability—particularly with the arrival of this committee—of increased action in judicial review and increased action under the ECHR. That seems to me to trip the very test the Minister set himself in Committee. That is why I put the amendment down again and why I strongly believe we need to accept it.
A very interesting point was made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes. I need to think about it, but in my bones I do not feel it is a problem and, obviously, nor do my colleagues. I am annoyed with myself for not having had the time to talk to colleagues on the Labour Front Bench to explain more carefully why this is not some sort of attempt to wreck anything but is a genuine point; we are trying to make sure that the Government can govern and are not dragged to the courts the whole time on what are, after all, a series of very emotive issues. We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, about that in Committee.
My simple hope, having discussed this at length yesterday—I am very grateful for the Minister’s time—is that we can have a meeting after Report, and I very much hope the Labour Front Bench will be there, where we can discuss this carefully, including taking into account the good point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, and come to some sort of resolution. As I said, the advice from people who care about this and genuinely know about it is that the very test the Minister set himself in Committee would be tripped if we did not accept this amendment. I hope that, if he cannot accept it immediately today, we will not have a messy vote but agree that this is the one issue to be taken away and discussed between now and Third Reading.