My Lords, I fully recognise that Amendment 19 is a probing amendment that would remove the possibility of the scheme making payments subject to conditions. It would therefore have the consequence that the recipient of a scheme payment would have full control over the use of the scheme payment.
Let me make the purpose of this part of the clause absolutely clear. In general, we fully expect that most scheme payments will be made to the applicant. This is for vulnerable people who might be mentally incapable of handling their own finances or who are unable to look after their own welfare by attending to basic financial transactions that adults normally carry out for themselves. It is important, therefore, that in those sorts of cases the scheme administrator is able to subject some payments to certain safeguards, such as how a scheme payment is to be used, and to decide when such conditions should be imposed.
We expect the scheme administrator to use this power to ensure that, where appropriate, payment is made to an appropriate person or fund to safeguard the beneficiaries’ interests. I am sure that the one thing on which we are all agreed in this Committee is that we want to avoid the recipient of a scheme payment having unsupervised control over the use of a large sum of money if they are incapable of managing such a sum. However, a number of valuable points are being made about the interplay between primary legislation and regulations, which we will take away and consider. Clearly, the rules are in draft and we will take the points made today as we look over them. With that assurance, I urge the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, not to press their amendment.