Compensation Bill [HL]

This has been an interesting debate, which cannot come to a conclusion. The more that I have listened to the contributions of my noble friends and the Minister, the more that I am increasingly concerned about this wide definition. There may be a number of providers of services out there which will be caught by the wider definition. Of course, at a later stage we will come to the exemptions. If we are catching providers of claims management services in a very wide sense, we need to have a better idea of exactly who we are bringing within this definition. Currently, the noble Baroness mentions 500 companies, but I can imagine that that could be narrowed to 100 companies or expanded to several thousand companies. We need to have some thought about where the boundaries will be. At Second Reading, the Minister said that she would exempt trade unions and a number of other bodies. I am not quite sure whether they are included in this wide definition, because they should be if they are to be exempt. Therefore, if 500 companies is the wide market, what will be the targeted or focused market? It occurs to me that we are dealing with a comparatively small number of companies.