Compensation Bill [HL]

I just wanted to give a couple of hypothetical examples. One would be if a charity was told that the requirement for authorisation was being waived—we will come to waiving—but, owing to an administrative mistake, that did not happen. Another would be if someone was doing a different kind of business altogether and provided a one-off piece of advice for the existing client, checked with the regulator, was told that there was no need to apply and then found himself in a difficult position. Because of the usual principle that ignorance is not a defence, as the noble Lord said, we wanted to capture that. I am happy to consider the wording. However, I have driven various people completely mad in trying to see whether we can improve it, so I do not fancy my chances. With regard to the example given the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, although I accept the point about the regulator making a mistake, I am not sure whether I can capture all the circumstances. I will look at the matter again but I hope that noble Lords understand exactly what I am trying to do. I am not trying to create any kind of loophole, although we could think of hypothetical circumstances where someone might, through no fault of his own, find himself in the wrong place. We need to ensure that a completely unjust result does not occur because we did not think about this matter in the legislation. I am sure that noble Lords will be just as concerned as I am to ensure that we do not put anyone in that position, just as I want to capture everyone whom I want to capture. I cannot find a better way of doing so than using the Financial Services and Markets Act as a basis and rewording it to reflect the circumstances. I will look at the matter again, although I would be reluctant to take out the subsection because we might regret it if we were in the position of accidentally catching someone. If Members of the Committee will allow me, I promise to look at the issue again on that basis.