Compensation Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart. This is an important regulatory function. The power to prosecute those providing regulated claims management services without the necessary authorisation is important. We must protect vulnerable people, for the reasons that noble Lords know as well as I do, and stop those companies providing misleading and inaccurate advice. The noble Lord will know better than I do that under common law everyone has the right to institute and to continue a criminal prosecution, provided that the right has not been limited or curtailed by statute. The DPP may take over the prosecution at any stage under Section 6(2) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985. The position of the regulator in that respect will be exactly the same as that of any other person. However, we have made explicit provision in the Bill to put this beyond doubt. The ability of the DPP to take over a prosecution and, if appropriate, to discontinue it, will remain unchanged. We do not believe that costs will be excessive. On the contrary, the power of the regulator to institute proceedings could avoid wasteful duplication of effort. The regulator will have specialist knowledge of the industry and of the circumstances underlying the offence. We believe that a prosecution could, in most circumstances, be more efficiently and effectively undertaken by the regulator. However, if the number of offences proves to be very small, it may be more cost-effective for the prosecutions to be undertaken by the Crown Prosecution Service. There is nothing in the Bill that could prevent that. In some circumstances, particularly where the offences were linked with matters outside the scope of the Bill, the regulator would be likely to hand the matter over to the Crown Prosecution Service to take action. Of course, if the regulator should prosecute, then he should seek legal advice externally, which would also keep costs to a minimum. An example that I suggest the noble Lord might want to look at—I should be happy to supply information to him—is the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC), which was set up in April 2000 to regulate immigration advisers, which has to date taken action that has resulted in 44 prosecutions with 43 convictions; it has, I think, a further 11 cases pending. Its last annual report, which I am happy to give the noble Lord, sets out the work it has done in this area to stamp out illegal practices. We believe we have this right in the Bill. We recognise the point that the noble Lord raises, but the most effective mechanism may be to allow the regulator to do that himself, bearing in mind the points that the noble Lord has raised and those that I have made about the number of prosecutions and wanting to ensure that, where it is appropriate to hand over, we do so.