My Lords, I want to briefly offer some words of support for that amendment. In their paper, Professor Ekins and Sir Stephen Laws, the former First Parliamentary Counsel, make a compelling argument that the United Kingdom Supreme Court judgment was wrong. I will not address that, because it is not important for the purposes of the amendment. What is important is that they also make a compelling argument for the deleterious practical consequences that are likely to flow from Adams because of the importance of the Carltona principle to the good and smooth running of government. That is beyond argument, and the risk here is that that principle has been in some way undermined.
Let me give an analogy. As your Lordships will be aware, a number of the most serious and sensitive criminal cases require the consent of the DPP before they may proceed. But the system has always been that the Director of Public Prosecutions designates a small number of his or her most senior prosecutors to exercise this consent function on the DPP’s behalf. Of course, if the DPP wishes to call in a particular case to consider himself or herself, that will and does happen. But if it were ever to be the case that every file requiring DPP consent had to be placed before the DPP in person, the system would swiftly grind to a halt; or, the DPP would exercise that consent allegedly personally but really and practically on the basis of advice that he or she had received elsewhere. So the present system is the more honest. The individual giving the consent, exercising the consent function, is the individual who has actually read and considered the papers. To the extent that this amendment will protect and fortify the Carltona principle, it has my full support.