My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendments 80 and 81 in my name. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, on his heart-rending speech, but it seemed only to go back to saying, “My goodness, PPO is a good idea”. So many of the risks which the noble Lord identified would be sorted out by that, but that is in the past.
New Schedule A1 to the Damages Act is inserted by Clause 8(2). At Second Reading, I said that I was worried that paragraph 3(3) did not give sufficient clarity to what was being asked for in the investment. I was concerned that, without that clarity, there could be a plethora of new Wells v Wells cases, with people trying to grapple with what was actually meant. Amendment 80 probes the word “investments” in the phrase,
“the assumption that the recipient of the relevant damages invests the relevant damages in a diversified portfolio of investments”.
We should at least be clear that those investments were debt securities, not equities.
Secondly, I thought it would be helpful to try to define a “very low level of risk”. That does not actually mean anything to me, with my background, and I suspect it does not mean anything in law. I have tried to define it as the level of risk you have when you buy UK Government debt security. These are probing amendments and I regard this as a discussion, but clarity in this area of the Bill would be greatly to the advantage of everyone concerned.