My Lords, I will read out a sentence that is relevant to my amendment and also to the one we have just discussed. The Minister stated:
“After careful consideration, the Government have decided not to restrict the information that the adjudicator can consider”.—[Official Report, 22/5/2012; col. 726.]
That is entirely right. It is a free country, with free speech and so on. However, at the other end of the story, if we were to get into a situation where it was found that something had been brought forward that turned out to be vexatious, it would represent a failure and would be proof that the Bill was not working as well as it should.
I am mindful of the warning of Professor Lyons that he was not at all sure that the investigation potential was all that large, because of the length of the supply chain and because the adjudicator may investigate whether a large retailer has broken the groceries code. That is quite a narrow ground on which to mount an investigation.
In my amendment I put forward the argument that we should take out “suspect” and put in “believe”. There is a lot of hearsay and suspicion in the world, and in the way in which people think about the way supermarkets behave. When considering several Bills recently the House had no problem accepting that “suspect” was too weak and that we should “believe” before we start engaging in the expenditure of public money. I also think that it would be a protection for the adjudicator. This business of investigation is delicate and the adjudicator will have quite a hard time with it.
It is not an answer to say that Amendment 24 is irrelevant, because I think that the Office of Fair Trading should persist. That is my preference but of course I am capable of accepting that we should debate this on the basis that there will be an adjudicator, even though I want to see the continuation of the OFT. The adjudicator would welcome the protection of having to say that he or she “believed” that they had reasonable grounds rather than just “suspected”. I beg to move.