Clause 3
Fraud Bill [Lords]
10:45 am
Dominic Grieve (Shadow Attorney General & Shadow Spokesman On Community Cohesion, Law Officers (Assist the Home Affairs Team); Beaconsfield, Conservative)
I think that the Solicitor-General will get agreement on the clause, although it and clause 4 are closely linked, so we need to consider both to understand what they will achieve.
As far as the element of offence in clause 3 is concerned, the key issue is what it places a legal duty on individuals to disclose. It might be helpful if the Solicitor-General gave the Committee some examples of individuals under a legal duty to make a disclosure. If I have understood correctly what the Government are seeking to achieve, the clause will place a considerable restriction on who will be caught by the provisions.
Clearly, there are numerous instances in which individuals might elect not to tell somebody something because they think that it is to their financial advantage. The classic example is the person being offered an object for sale at £50 who knows very well from his greater expertise that the item is worth £50,000 and chooses not to tell the vendor. He is under no legal duty to give him that information and, therefore, he would not be caught by the provisions of clause 3.
Those circumstances seem to encapsulate what clause 3 is trying to do. I am broadly supportive of that, but we need to be clear. What might be helpful during the course of the debate is if the Solicitor-General confirmed whether my understanding of clause 3 is correct and amplified examples of what he regards as a legal duty. I take a legal duty to be a duty prescribed by law—no more and no less—and not a duty prescribed by morality. Perhaps a more interesting and difficult area is whether that covers duties that could be thought to be equitably placed upon his shoulders. Having a certain amount of clarification would be helpful before we rush in headlong and—which I would want to do—approve clause 3.