My Lords, the noble Lord has tabled this amendment to require that investigations be made into the record-keeping practice in the insurance industry which, to put it no more brusquely, we know has been insufficient in the past. It would also require us to
legislate to protect those who cannot bring a claim against an employer or insurer because the records have not been traced.
I sympathise with the aim behind this amendment, which is to bring those culpable to account. Unfortunately, what we already know about record-keeping practices tells me that this simply will not be possible and that any investigation of this sort would be a costly addition to the scheme. One of the things of which the noble Lord may not have been aware, and inevitably would not have been aware of when he put down this amendment, is that on 4 June the FCA published details of its requirements for employer liability insurers to undertake effective searches for historic policies. Moreover, the employer liability tracing office, ELTO, is currently undertaking an audit of the record keeping of its 150 or so members, including Equitas. The number affected by the issue of records that were destroyed is broadly 300 out of the 2,400 people with relevant mesothelioma per year, which implies that one in eight cases is untraced—that is the proportion of the problem.
I hope that noble Lords will understand that we want to ensure that the maximum amount of funds possible go to helping those eligible people who come to the scheme and therefore there is not the flexibility to put resources into potentially costly investigations such as these. I have already spoken to noble Lords about the exercise that I conducted into what was likely to be available on a historic basis, and we already have measures to improve tracing. On that basis, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw this amendment.