Fraud Bill [HL]

The noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General was quite right to give a detailed answer to my noble friend Lord Kingsland when seeking to tease out what might or might not be meant by ““legal duty””. I confess that I am still not entirely clear on that—and I do not share the confidence of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, that a judge will necessarily find that very easy. Will the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General make it clear whether a legal duty includes a contractual duty? When someone is buying or selling a house and has been asked to answer searches or answer to certain degrees about the condition of the house, that person may suspect that the state of the house is in some way not very good and may keep quiet about it. Is that person committing a criminal offence? Some clarification that we can study before Report, which throws greater light on what legal duty means or does not mean, would be very helpful.