My Lords, this is, I hope, a brief and probing amendment. To be eligible for a payment under the scheme, Clause 2(1)(c) requires that a person has not brought an action against an employer or insurer and is unable to do so. The amendment requires that action to be successful. The implication is that an unsuccessful action would not preclude access to the payment scheme.
I have had some contact with the Bill team on this, and I think that the government response will be that if an action cannot be successful, it would necessarily preclude access to the payment scheme, because the conditions could not be met. I wonder whether that is necessarily so. What if an action were against an employer found not to be the right one but when the right one had gone out of business and the insurer could not be identified? Similarly, if an insurer were pursued by an action but proved to be the wrong one, why should that then preclude access to the scheme? I beg to move.