Compensation Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for moving his amendment. Without question, credit rehabilitation farmers would be covered and captured by the Bill. If the activities of the credit rehabilitation farmers take place in the context of making a claim or advice services et cetera they will fall within the regulatory ambit of the Bill. That is because Clause 2(1) lists those persons who may provide claim services if they are authorised or exempt, subject to a waiver or an individual acting otherwise than in the course of a business. Clause 2(4) provides further definition of individuals acting in business terms, so they will need to apply for authorisation under the Bill. I endorse all the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about needing to be clear about capturing the relevant bodies. Looking at how some of these areas are now being populated, we need to be even more mindful of the value of using our regulatory process to ensure that we can deal with these issues with particular companies. I want to say something about the outcome of David Clementi’s review. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, it was intended that, when David Clementi reported, we would take the Clementi recommendations as a whole collection, but we decided to move forward in this particular area more speedily. Eventually, we want to integrate with those reforms. The noble Lord was right to talk about the four different areas where reform is happening and the role of the ministerial steering group is partly to ensure that we address that issue. We are planning to bring forward a draft legal services Bill in this Session, which I hope will make clear how we propose to do that. So there is no question that we would capture the credit rehabilitation farmers in the way in which the Bill has been drafted. I hope that the noble Lord feels reassured by that and is able to withdraw his amendment.