Compensation Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, although I am always nervous when we stray into discussing other groups of amendments before we are at the relevant point. I shall therefore not address the issues that we will come to later. I am also conscious of being in Committee. No, the clause does not amend the law. I apologise if I did not put things as clearly as I intended; my see-saw analogy is the best way for me to describe them. In this context, we have a real perception that the law has become in doubt, either because people believe that the courts are making decisions in an inappropriate or wrong way, or because people’s behaviour is changing due to their belief that the law does not do what we say it does. We want to make sure that the law is not in doubt. I understand from the advice that I have as a government Minister—I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, will recognise it—that it is a function of legislation to remove doubt in the law. I am not trying to amend the law, but to take away doubt. At the end of the noble Lord’s speech, I was not sure whether he was in favour of the clause or not. If he were able to come up with a way of dealing with statutory duty, I would be interested to hear it. I was trying to say that you have not only so many different statutory duties, but different standards of care. We deliberately sought not to curtail the activities of the courts in any way by making the clause specific in one sense, but very open in another. It is there precisely to deal with perception. That is absolutely appropriate in this context. I hope that that clarifies our position.