Compensation Bill [HL]

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, talked about the road to Hell and pleasant pastures. My ambition is to get to my Christmas lunch in reasonably good ““nick””. I recognise that we have a lot of business to get through this afternoon. Therefore, I shall speak as briefly as possible so that we can make as much progress as possible and see this Bill safely on its way. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred to the Law Commission and the Prime Minister’s speech. I am grateful for the noble Lord’s questions and I will study them carefully. As I indicated on our previous Committee day, I am the Minister responsible for maintaining links with the Law Commission. We have already been in touch with it. Although I am grateful for the questions, I have in my own mind precisely how I plan to hold those discussions. I will, of course, ensure that I keep the Committee informed. I am also, as noble Lords know—and I know that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, knows this very well—very mindful of the need to look carefully at the current wording. The Committee will hear me say more about that as we move on to later amendments, in particular those of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. My interest is to try to work with the Committee to ensure that we have an appropriate wording. What we have already heard in the contributions from noble Lords is, in a sense what I described perhaps ineptly at our last meeting as my see-saw. On the one hand is the issue of real desire. I have been talking to members of the all-party group and particularly Mr Brazier and Mr Öpik, who I happened to run into in the last few days, about their real desire to ensure that Clause 1 remains and about their intent to support it as far as they possibly can for precisely the reasons given by the noble Earl; ensuring not that we change the law but that we clarify it where we feel that that is necessary. That, I understand from all my dealings with the Law Officers and parliamentary counsel, is an appropriate use of legislation. On the other hand, noble Lords who are members of the legal profession and, perhaps more importantly, others outside have said that there is the need to ensure that we do not alter the law so that we affect how the law develops and grows, in particular as regards the common law. We have sought to do that. I am absolutely comfortable with the current clause, although I am not, as I have indicated, wedded to it remaining precisely as it is. I am very clear that its purpose is not to change the law but to clarify it; and that it does not change the law in any way. As regards the Prime Minister’s speech, he was speaking before we reached the point of developing this legislation, so, in a sense, his guidelines have translated into the work we have done around the legislation itself. I do not know what was in the Prime Minister’s mind. I did not speak to him on that day. He is an extremely good speech-maker. He writes a lot of his own speeches and he makes the points extremely well. I thought he gave a very good exposition of the issues that he was concerned about around the compensation culture. So, in a sense, we have moved on from what the Prime Minister said and I hope that noble Lords will agree that within the Bill we have attempted to capture the issues of Clause 1.