Clause 3
Compensation Bill [Lords]
1:15 pm
Simon Hughes (Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs & Shadow Attorney General, Constitutional Affairs; North Southwark and Bermondsey, Liberal Democrat)
I support the amendments. They all seem to go in the right direction. I said on Second Reading that we should have as little legislation as possible in this country. We legislate far too much. The problem is often with administration, and if we administered better we would need to legislate less. I approach all legislation on the basis that we should not legislate unless we absolutely have to and we are persuaded by the evidence. There are sufficient considered views about the issue in part 2 to make it appropriate to legislate, and therefore to regulate.
I noticed—amusingly but understandably—that at the end of our discussions about part 1, civil servant team A departed and the Bill team for part 2 arrived. There are clearly experts on this sector here to assist the Minister, and no doubt they have had many issues to consider as the Constitutional Affairs Committee and others have reported. The Government have been under much non-partisan pressure to regulate this area. The hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire broke down using a verbal pie chart the ways in which the literature comes our way: being stopped in the street is one way; and others include advertising, and the stuff that one picks up in shops or finds in newspapers.
We are making a rod for our own back if we start part 2 with “Claims Management Services” and then state that it will deal with regulated claims management services only. There could be a wonderful debate about what a claims management service is, but it is better to have one such debate, and if necessary leave it to the courts, rather than two, the first being about whether something is a claims management service, and the second about whether it is regulated.
We are trying to deal with an abuse of the free market in which person A or company A exploits person B or organisation B. We ought to catch all the fish in the net, not start to limit the definition in the title of the clause. I see where it goes: one looks for the definition of regulated, and in typical legalese, subsection (2)(e) says that
“services are regulated if they are—”
and we get a circular definition—
“of a kind prescribed by the Secretary of State”.
We immediately set ourselves up for secondary legislation, which the Secretary of State must produce and to which Parliament must agree. The alternative definition is that services are regulated if they are
“provided in cases or circumstances of a kind prescribed by order”.
Again, there is only one way forward: secondary legislation. It is better that we define a claims management service and then leave it, letting the market decide. If there is a debate in court over whether something is a claims management service, we should let that happen.
The last reason is that, as the hon. Gentleman hinted, it is impossible to think ahead to how such things might happen. At the moment, we are thinking mainly of people who advertise on television, radio, hoardings and flyers. In the age of the internet and e-mail, people could proffer such services there, but they could also do so in other ways. A weekend community event in any of our constituencies could be sponsored by an individual or a company that wanted to advertise in a different way by selling something at a stall.
I am worried that if we start trying to define this by regulation, we will always have to be regulating. I urge the Minister to accept the amendment, resist over-prescription and over-definition, and try to ensure less unnecessary work for Parliament and lawyers, and less secondary legislation, which would be void.