My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Eatwell for moving Amendment 42. As we all know, he has a huge amount of experience in this field, having overseen many of these matters in another jurisdiction. He has long pressed the Government to introduce a register of this kind, but Amendment 42 calls for proper data verification. As we have heard from a number of noble Lords—the noble Lords, Lord Vaux and Lord Cromwell, the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, and others—it is essential to the credibility of this Bill to ensure that any data is verified and accurate, as my noble friend Lord Eatwell put it.
The Government moved a little on this topic when the Bill was in the House of Commons, passing what was then Amendment 49, as we heard from other noble Lords, requiring the Secretary of State to lay regulations outlining the verification process before the register goes live. We welcome that move as it
provides greater certainty, but as we have already heard, it prompts a number of supplementary questions and, in our view, does not go far enough. That is what Amendment 42, which we support, seeks to address.
When will we see the regulations? Will the process be based on previous consultations or require a separate engagement exercise? What if they are brought forward and the envisaged process is deemed inadequate? What if we end up getting the Bill before the SI has been laid? As with the earlier group on the transition period, we need greater clarity on process and timescales. Surely, accurate, verified data as required by my noble friend Lord Eatwell’s Amendment 42 is essential; without it, the Bill simply will not succeed.