My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his full response to each amendment in this group. He tells us that sufficient safeguards are in place to ensure the objectivity and unbiased behaviour of the scheme administrator, and asks us to accept that the open procurement competition will be a contributor to guaranteeing that impartiality. However, it may be difficult for him to find anybody competent to run the scheme who is not in the industry, so the problem of conflict is likely to persist. I do not wish continuously to impugn the motives of people in the insurance industry, and would like to think that those who are appointed to work as administrators of the scheme will set out with the best of honourable intentions.
We are always being warned, however, that we should avoid situations of conflict of interest and, from time to time, people are vulnerable to the temptations that conflicts of interest present to them. There is a whole institutional temptation here because the insurance industry stands to gain significantly from cases not going to court and from cases not being handled generously by administrators, who will have such absolute powers of determination. I therefore remain concerned about this, although the Minister offered a little reassurance about Clause 4(3)(b) when he said that it was harmless. Certainly, on the face of it, the wording of it seems to give enormously large powers to the administrator, but I accept what he said about the purpose of that particular piece of drafting.
Moving on to the oversight committee, it is good that the Minister agrees that there should be such a committee; he made his points about getting stakeholders on to the board of ELTO and the technical committee being within ELTO, so that stakeholders would be in a position to keep an eye on the performance of those parts of the whole apparatus. He said, understandably enough, that he wants a non-legislative solution, but we will probably want to know a good deal more about the provision that he intends to propose before
we can agree that it is right in principle that there should be a non-legislative solution. My noble friends may want to reserve the right to return to that, whether that is here or in another place.
As to the report on future schemes, the Minister again rejected the proposal from my noble friends, as he does not want to divert scarce resources—no doubt of time and energy, as well as money—to preparing that. He suggested that the complexities of the other asbestos-related conditions are such that they would not fit well into the mould of the scheme that we are legislating for in this Bill. I hope, however, that the Minister will continue to reflect on the fact that there are—as my noble friends explained compellingly, and rather movingly—large numbers of people who are suffering from these other conditions. At the moment they have all too little support; we know that there is a vast disparity between the lump sums that are paid under government schemes and the awards that the courts provide and the lesser payments that the scheme will provide. These people continue to be seriously disadvantaged and we cannot be happy with that.
I was pleased that the Minister was able to tell us that the success rate in tracing has been improving spectacularly, which suggests that it could always have happened if there had been the will on the part of the industry to do this. We must be pleased that it is now doing better but, equally, we must have means to keep the pressure up and to ensure that, in the future, there is not again any deterioration in the success rate of tracing and, above all, that elements of the industry do not resume the practice of conveniently losing or shredding documentation, which is the great scandal. They are getting off all too lightly in that regard.
On the annual report, the subject of Amendment 30, the Minister wanted us to accept that scrutiny and reviews are already planned and that we do not need to worry because everybody will keep an eye on it and Parliament does not need to be too bothered by it. I do not think that the annual Written Ministerial Statement that the noble Lord has promised is good enough for Parliament, even when combined with the online information that he said will be made available. He will have seen already the intensity of interest in your Lordships’ House and he will certainly see both greater intensity of interest in the House of Commons when it comes to scrutinise this Bill and a wide and deep concern across the country. I think that it is a proper responsibility of Parliament to invigilate this process, and an annual report is a convenient and practical means for Parliament to do so. Therefore, I am disappointed that the Minister has resisted that. This is a subject that I think we will wish to return to but, in the mean time, I beg leave—
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