Lord Lemos (Lab)

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, and others for their contributions. I also thank the noble Lord and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, for the discussions we have had about these points. I think I am sure of what the noble Lords are driving at in this collection of issues, and I will deal with them one by one in in order to set out the Government’s position clearly and the legal advice we have had, for example, on the question of recklessness. I will come to that in a moment if I may. But before I respond to each amendment in turn, I want to pick up the point that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wolfson, made about public servants and disincentivising. I do not want anything the Government say about this Bill to suggest in any way that most public servants are dishonest or seek to cover things up or lie in inquiries. Public servants are honourable people in the very large measure, and I applaud and pay tribute to their work. I was challenged at a Cross-Bench meeting to say that. I promised I would and now I have. Let me turn specifically to the amendments, which I think I have a good answer to. Amendment 3 would remove from Clause 2(3) the requirement for an authority or official to notify an inquiry or investigation if their acts “may be” relevant. The Bill uses “are or may be relevant” at this point, rather than just “are relevant”, because at that stage of the inquiry or investigation, the authority or official may not have complete certainty about what is relevant or not. So that is a proactive obligation. The authority or individual will not have received a direction or request explaining what the inquiry or investigation requires of them, so necessarily, at that point, they may have to act on an assumption of what “may be relevant”. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wolfson, pointed out that the obligation in Clause 2(3) is different, as we use “relevant” and not “may be relevant”. The reason is that it comes at a different stage in the process, when it is possible to be clearer and more specific about what precisely the information requested is. So that is the reason for the difference, but I am very happy to discuss it further if he wants to do that.