Compensation Bill [HL]

I very much welcome what the Minister said, but perhaps I may press her on two further points. First, on referral fees, there is a great deal of concern over what are colloquially known as ““kick-backs”” between the claims management company, solicitors, doctors, other medical professionals and so on. I would hope that the Minister would find some way of ensuring that all relevant financial information is made available to the person who is seeking the services of the claims management company. ““Question and answer”” guidance issued as recently as 21 December 2005 by the Law Society’s Rules and Ethics Committee, entitled The ins and outs of referral fees, asks:"““What do I have to tell clients about my referral fee arrangements?””." The answer states:"““Section 2A(3) requires you to provide the client with ‘all relevant information concerning the referral and, in particular, the amount of any payment’. Where a payment is made to an introducer in relation to each client referred by the introducer, either as a fixed amount or as a proportion of the fee charged to the client, the amount of the payment must be disclosed to each client””." The guidance continues under the question:"““Can I pay, or offer to pay, referral fees to doctors or other medical professionals?””" There the answer states:"““The code does not specify categories of persons or businesses to whom or to which referral fees may be paid or offered. However, all referral arrangements (whether or not there is any payment involved) are subject to the general provisions of the code, which requires compliance with all of the practice rules, in particular rule 1.""““This prohibits solicitors doing anything that compromises or impairs, or is likely to compromise or impair the good repute of the solicitor or the solicitors’ profession””." Those rules are pretty clear, and it is good to know that the Law Society takes such a firm line; but we are not dealing with solicitors here, but with claims management companies. Their history, particularly in the light of the evidence of the Arculus report in May 2004 and the CAB report to which I have referred, suggests that we are dealing with individuals and companies who participate in financial arrangements that are not disclosed or transparent. I am pressing the Minister to assure us that this is all within her compass; that she will not allow any loopholes to exist whereby all sorts of kick-backs could be made to all sorts of people without seeing the light of day. The second point on which I would like to press the Minister is the speed of what we are discussing. Out there, there is increasing evidence that a number of practices are taking place that really ought to be stopped and prevented. I will come to a number of other points on advertising under various further amendments. It would be helpful to know that the Minister still has an open mind about trying to introduce something that could take effect pretty quickly without having to wait for the structure of the new regulator to be set up. There ought to be some way of ensuring that the consumer is aware of all those payments going on, often behind their back, so that they can see the overall picture much more clearly and that the outside world is aware of exactly what is going on. I am not sure how that should be done; I have an open mind about the best way to achieve it. I would like to be assured that she does as well.