Compensation Bill [HL]

I will be delighted to do that. I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving me the opportunity to do that. I want to get some advice from within the department. As the noble Lord said, we rejected the recommendation from the task force on that area. Within our response to the Better Regulation Task Force, we have indicated why. The noble Lord raises an interesting point. His correspondence with the FSA points to something that we need to think about too. As the noble Lord says, there are companies that advertise and take a percentage of what someone receives. The question was raised—I think, in the response from the FSA—about whether, by getting information out to the consumers that they can make a claim, that is the kind of service to be offered to people, but if people take on work on their behalf, they should pay. This goes back to what the noble Lord was saying about the role of the regulator and telling people about free services that exist. If people choose to use a particular service because it suits them, perhaps there is less work that they have to do, or perhaps they have volunteered to take on looking at all aspects of it in return for a fee. For some consumers that may be a better route for various reasons, but at least they are doing it in full knowledge, which was the underlying point that the noble Lord made in our previous discussion. There is an alternative, but at the moment we are fairly sure that people are not aware that there is an alternative in all cases. We are trying to suggest that they make real choices. As I have indicated, I shall write to the noble Lord about contingency fees and address the points that he has raised.