Compensation Bill [HL]

My Lords, owing to an error which I made yesterday, I arranged for Amendment No. 37—which ought to be in this group—to be put into the following group. I hope that the Minister will not mind if I speak to it now as part of this group, where it obviously belongs. The background to this is that the Bill as it now stands permits or requires,"““the application of subjective criteria relating to competence or suitability””." I expressed my unhappiness with that in Grand Committee and I am glad to see that that particular version has gone as a result of the amendment now being proposed. We now have a long list of relatively subjective criteria. I noticed that the first draft that was produced added a further criterion which was honesty, which seemed to open up far too wide a field of investigation and was again potentially highly subjective and much too general, so I am glad to see that it does not appear in the amendment in its final form. However, one thing that is missing here is any evidence of professional or business misconduct. That ought to be included in the criteria. The list includes:"““criminal records; proceedings in any court or tribunal; proceedings of a body exercising functions in relation to a trade or profession””," and so forth. Professional or business misconduct may well be caught by proceedings in a tribunal or,"““proceedings of a body exercising functions in relation to a trade or profession””," but it is certainly not inevitable that that would be the case. I would have thought that where there is evidence of professional or business misconduct, that ought to be an important criterion for the regulator to consider. In those circumstances, I hope that the Minister will consider adding this as another criterion. I am happy with the criteria otherwise set out in paragraph (3)(c) of the amendment.