Member

I guess that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, is right, pretty much: this is not exactly a primer in covering up one’s mistakes, but it is certainly a recognition that what we have to do, as far as future allocation rounds are concerned, is make sure that no one who is applying and coming into the scheme is thrown out for trivial reasons or finds that they have a non-qualification result that is overturned later on appeal to a qualification but they are then too late for an allocation round to consider them. The noble Earl mentioned the question of sealed bids being suspended, as it were, while those appeals take place. One of the mechanisms in here is to make sure that someone who has previously not qualified but then decides to qualify, while the allocation process goes on in the meantime, does not land in the middle of the qualification process in a way that disrupts the rest of the process. In theory, if someone comes into the system, say, between results and declaration, they would splash into the system in such a way that other people who had previously been allocated would find that their allocation had been disallowed.