Your Lordships will be pleased to know we have arrived at the final group, in which the amendments all relate to the question of offences. The structure of the Bill as it stands is such that if there was a breach of the requirements of the register, the registrar would be able to proceed only by way of seeking to impose a criminal penalty in respect of the breach, whereas the current legislation enables the registrar to act in other—and in my view more proportionate—ways by seeking a civil penalty.
The purpose of most of these amendments is therefore to introduce the option of a civil penalty and the various requirements that go with that: a civil penalty regime in Amendment 20; a requirement to notify someone who is believed to be in breach and the civil penalty that would be imposed under Amendment 21; the character of the notice under Amendment 22; the right of appeal against that under Amendment 23; the relationship of the civil penalty to any criminal offence so as not to create double jeopardy under Amendment 24; the enforcement if a civil penalty is imposed as a civil debt under Amendment 25; and further details relating to the civil penalty under Amendment 26.
Amendment 19, the lead amendment that I am moving now, is about due diligence. It illustrates the difference between a criminal offence and the civil penalty since, if someone was guilty of an administrative oversight in relation to the requirement to register, essentially the registrar observing this breach would be inclined to go down the route of a civil penalty if it was sufficiently serious. One would be very unlikely to want to create a criminal offence for those kinds of administrative oversights. If someone has failed to comply with the register but has applied due diligence, it is important that they would have a defence of due diligence against a criminal offence; however, where a civil penalty is concerned on something like an administrative oversight, there should not really be that kind of defence. So this replicates the existing structure of penalties, I think it is more proportionate and I hope it will commend itself to the House. I beg to move.