My Lords, I put my name to the amendment and I will make a brief addition to what my noble friend said. This is a very significant change to the law. It is quite complicated, moving from the present arrangements of opt in to the double arrangement of opt in and opt out, going beyond, interestingly, what the European Union advises, and perhaps not concentrating enough on alternative dispute resolution techniques. Having said all the way through that the one thing we do not want is a US-style lawyers’ charter—we are all agreed on that—unfortunately the Bill is drawn so widely that we run a real risk that that is what we will get.
We need to remember that we are in the Anglo-Saxon camp and have a tendency to do things in a similar way to the way they are done in the United States—in the creative arts or wherever, and including, I fear, the law. We also need to remember that where such arrangements have been made in other jurisdictions, they have not been free of problems. Australia, which is often cited, has had considerable trouble about the authorisation of those who are to conduct the class actions or collective proceedings. It has been described as skirmishing. The way the Bill is drawn, we will have very similar problems with the question of who is to be authorised and who is not—because the person who is not may not be very happy.
New subsection (8)(b) states that a representative can be appointed,
“only if the Tribunal considers that it is just and reasonable for that person to act as a representative in those proceedings”.
I will return to that on the next group, but it is very widely drawn. In support of my worry about the very wide drafting, there was a long and relatively confused debate in the other place in the Bill Committee. The answer, both there and here, seems to be, “Well, the Competition Appeal Tribunal will sort it all out”. I think that that puts too much of a burden on the tribunal and is unlikely to work well.
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