Compensation Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 22:"Page 4, line 37, leave out ““institute criminal proceedings in respect”” and insert ““refer any information or documents to the police with a view to prosecution””" The noble Lord said: My Lords, the amendment would transfer responsibility for prosecutions for offences under Clause 5 from the regulator to the police. Under the Bill, the regulator has two very different kinds of power. One is the power to deal with misconduct by those currently authorised to conduct claims management services. Those will be civil proceedings—the regulator will conduct a hearing, and there will be a right to appeal to the tribunal and so on—and the regulator can impose civil penalties in the form of the removal of authorisation or the imposition of conditions on authorisation. The other power is now to prosecute people who commit offences by providing claims management services while not authorised to do so. It seems to me that regulation by the regulator will be really quite small compared with that of most regulating bodies. Indeed, it will be far smaller than, say, regulation under the Financial Services Authority or many other regulatory powers. In those circumstances, I find it difficult to envisage that the regulator is likely to be justified in having an office that is capable of handling criminal prosecutions. Unless the purpose is different from the one that I see, it would be undesirable for the regulator to have an office that would deal with prosecutions. Surely, it would be much more cost-efficient for the regulator to be able to conduct an investigation and, if the investigation gives one reason to believe that an offence has been committed, rather than have a department in his or her own office that could conduct prosecutions, to hand over responsibility for prosecutions to the police and leave them to get on with it. I would be interested to hear from the noble Baroness how she sees prosecutions for offences under Clause 5 being carried on. I beg to move.