HL Deb 14 November 1996 vol 575 cc1066-77

5.56 p.m.

Lord Goff of Chieveley

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.

The Bill is introduced to amend the law of theft following a decision by your Lordships' House acting in its judicial capacity in a case called Regina v. Preddy, in which judgment was given on 10th July of this year. The case was concerned with mortgage frauds, when people obtain advances of money to enable them to buy houses or flats, borrowing the money usually from banks or building societies, and do so by making false representations to the lender about their assets, the property, their jobs, or any other material fact.

In Preddy the accused were charged and convicted of obtaining property by deception contrary to Section 15 of the Theft Act 1968. But the Appellate Committee of your Lordships' House, which on that occasion was presided over by my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, the leading speech being delivered by myself, concluded that Section 15 was not apt for that purpose. This was because an offence is committed under Section 15 when a person by deception obtains property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it. I stress the words "property belonging to another". The trouble is that in the modern world, when substantial sums of money are transferred from A to B, in many cases the money received by B was never the property of A. The usual situation is that there is a bank account in A's name, which I will assume to be in credit. That credit is in law property belonging to A. But when money is transferred from A's bank account to B's bank account, the credit is not transferred to B. All that happens is that the credit in A's bank account is reduced and a corresponding credit is made to B's account with another bank. That result may be achieved by a payment by cheque or by telegraphic transfer or electronic transfer as between banks. But in those processes, B never receives any property belonging to A.

Your Lordships will appreciate that this result follows, a fortiori, when A's bank account is not in credit but is overdrawn. All that happens then is that A's overdraft is increased. Obviously there can have been no property at all belonging to A which might be said to have been transferred to B. As a result, in Preddy, as your Lordships' House held, although the accused acted dishonestly and benefited from their dishonesty, they did not commit any offence under Section 15 of the Theft Act 1968. Their appeals were allowed and their convictions quashed. I may add that this conclusion was inevitable. A serious gap was revealed in our law of theft. Something clearly must be done about this very quickly.

I am glad to be able to inform your Lordships that the Law Commission has acted with the most commendable speed. It rapidly carried out an informal consultation exercise, and then produced with expedition a report and a draft Bill. That is the Bill which is now before your Lordships' House.

I now turn to the Bill itself. The Bill contains only five clauses. It will apply to England and Wales and may be extended to Northern Ireland. First, it creates a new offence of obtaining a money transfer by deception. This is provided for in Clause 1 of the Bill, which introduces two new sections, Section 15A and Section 15B, which are to be inserted after Section 15 in the Theft Act 1968. A money transfer occurs when a debit is made to one account and a credit is made to another account, the credit resulting from the debit or vice versa. The offence embraces cases where payments are made by cheque or by any other means, such as, for example, telegraphic or electronic transfer. The new offence will be created by the new Section 15A. Section 15B will deal with matters of detail, with which I do not think I need trouble your Lordships.

Clause 2 of the Bill provides for another new offence, to become Section 24A of the Act. It is described in the sidenote as: Retaining credits from dishonest sources, etc.". I feel bound to say that I do not myself believe that that is an altogether satisfactory description. The sidenote should, I think, be changed to read: Dishonestly retaining a wrongful credit". That change can be made at a later stage.

A person will be guilty of such an offence if he knows, or believes, that a wrongful credit has been made to his account or to an account in which he has an interest and dishonestly fails to take reasonable steps to cancel such a credit. This is an altogether new offence. It is perhaps most closely analogous to handling stolen goods but applies in cases where the accused does not receive the property of another. The new offence fills what is considered to be another lacuna in our law of theft.

Clause 3 of the Bill provides for these two new offences to be included among the Group A fraud offences listed in Part I of the Criminal Justice Act 1993. That will have the effect that, when this legislation is implemented, the appropriate provisions relating to jurisdiction will apply. In particular, this will enable the English courts to exercise jurisdiction even where one of the relevant events occurs abroad; for example, obtaining a money transfer by deception where the deception occurs in this country but the money transfer is obtained abroad.

Clause 4 is concerned with the offence of obtaining services by deception which is contained in Section 1 of the Theft Act 1978. The purpose of Clause 4 of the Bill is to make it clear that that offence applies in the case of obtaining a loan by deception. The section already contains a very wide definition in subsection (2) of what constitutes an obtaining of services within the section. This reads as follows: It is an obtaining of services where the other is induced to confer a benefit by doing some act, or causing or permitting some act to be done, on the understanding that the benefit has been or will be paid for". However, there has been some doubt whether that definition, wide as it is, is wide enough to include obtaining a loan by deception. In a case called R. v. Halai it was decided by the Court of Appeal that the definition was wide enough to do so, but very recently that decision was itself disapproved by the Court of Appeal. Clause 4 will make it clear that obtaining a loan by deception does indeed fall within the scope of the offence.

This amendment cannot, however, completely solve the problem exposed by Preddy because it does not provide for cases of obtaining by deception non-cash payments other than loans. This will be covered by the new Section 15A.

The new offences set out in Clauses 1 and 2 and the amended offence in Clause 4 will not apply retrospectively.

Clause 5 sets out the Bill's short title, commencement and extent.

I respectfully commend this Bill to your Lordships' House. There have been widespread calls from the Serious Fraud Office, from financial institutions and others to fill the gap in the law revealed by the decision of your Lordships' House in the case of Preddy. The Law Commission, which has been instrumental in devising the solution to fill that gap, has consulted as widely as possible in the time available. I believe that the measures proposed in the Bill are generally regarded as sensible and effective to overcome the significant gaps in the Theft Acts which I have described. In his judgment in the recent case of R. v. Graham and Others, which followed in the wake of Preddy, my noble and learned friend the Lord Chief Justice commended the work of the Law Commission and expressed the hope that the Bill would be enacted as soon as possible. The Government are, I understand, equally anxious to speed the passage of the Bill, and I am very hopeful that it may attract cross-party support.

Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Goff of Chieveley.)

6.7 p.m.

Lord Kingsland

My Lords, I find myself somewhat embarrassed to be speaking immediately after the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goff of Chieveley, and before the noble and learned Lords, Lord Donaldson of Lymington and Lord Wilberforce. However, I shall console them by saying that my intervention will be very brief.

I want to do two things. The first is to congratulate the noble and learned Lord on producing in record time an answer to the problems raised by the case of Preddy. It was clearly right that the large gap that was opened up in the law should be filled as quickly as possible. I recognise that he was helped enormously by the speedy response of the Law Commission. Nevertheless, he must be congratulated on incorporating their work so swiftly and, if I may say so, so deftly in the Bill. I believe the whole House is very grateful to him for it. It will do something to revive Section 15 of the Theft Act which, I thought, had become largely moribund following the case of Gomez.

The noble and learned Lord's judgment has also restored my faith in the fact that there is still something left of the actus reus in the law of theft. One of the things that concerns me very greatly about the law in general is that it relies too much on the doctrine of dishonesty to obtain convictions. The fact that such detailed amendments have to be made to the law now suggests to me that the time has come for a much more general review of the law of theft.

A great deal now depends on the operation of Section 1 of the Theft Act 1968. After the case of Gomez, in the Judicial Committee of your Lordships' House, the terms of Section 1 have become extremely widely cast. Any assumption of the rights of ownership in property is now regarded as an appropriation. Even consent to the appropriation by the victim is not a barrier to a conviction. All that is now left of the actus reus in Section 1 of the law is the fact that property must belong to another. Heavy responsibilities are placed on the shoulders of the jury, who have to take a view about what dishonesty is in each case. In my submission, that leaves too much uncertainty in a crucial part of our criminal law.

The situation is even more serious in the law of conspiracy to defraud, where it is hard to find a scintilla of an actus reus. In any democratic nation which believes in the liberty of the individual, it is crucial that there should be as much certainty as possible in the definition of the law. I have come quite firmly now to share the view of a number of distinguished academics—a view long held by Professor Glanville-Williams at Cambridge and more recently by Professor Sir John Smith—who believed that the actus reus of the law of theft should require an unlawful act itself in addition to the requirement of dishonesty. The best way of defining that unlawful act is to look to the law of civil wrongs: the law of tort; the law of breach of trust; and company law.

Of course, that will not entirely remove the element of uncertainty. As the common law develops, the law of tortious wrongs and of breaches of trust will change. It will require some effort on behalf of judges sitting in Crown Courts to keep abreast of the civil law as well as the criminal law. But against that, we shall have the crucial ingredient of certainty which has been lacking. If what I say is true of Section 1 of the Theft Act it also ought to be true of the offence of conspiracy to defraud, which I think should be looked at at exactly the same time because the two, in a way, run together.

The offence of conspiracy to defraud is used too widely now in prosecutions. The burden on the shoulders of the jury is even heavier as regards that offence than it is in Section 1 of the Theft Act. It is my belief that a similar amendment should be made to that effect; that is to say, there should be a requirement of unlawfulness in addition to dishonesty, and perhaps, too, the constraint of the 1977 Criminal Law Act, which applies to all other conspiracies save the conspiracy to defraud.

I said that I would detain your Lordships for only a short time. At least I can claim to have achieved that.

6.17 p.m.

Lord Wilberforce

My Lords, I support the Bill very strongly. It is quite clear that a defect in the law has been revealed by the case of Preddy and that the Law Commission and this Bill have done a repair job.

What has occurred here is very well exemplified by the occurrences which so often happen in English law—particularly, one may say, in the law of theft, which is a good example—when one starts with something very simple and primitive; for instance, there are the Ten Commandments and there are cases in which somebody has put his hand into somebody else's pocket or into the till. That is taking and it is theft, as everybody understands it. But then life becomes much more complicated. The techniques of appropriating other people's property develop—to quote the well-known rhyme: Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat, When it's so lucrative to cheat". In 1968 there was a situation in which the techniques of transfer of property and the techniques of dishonesty had developed enormously and the common law had not kept pace. So the Theft Act 1968 was brought in, and I remember taking part in the debates on it in this House. Unfortunately, very little time was given by the government of the day for discussion of what became the Theft Act 1968, which aimed at simplifying the law and making it much more comprehensible and up-to-date. A certain number of noble Lords tried to extend and improve on the wording used in the Bill. I remember being very strongly rebuked by the then Lord Chief Justice for the impertinence of trying to improve on the report of the Criminal Law Revision Committee.

However, we worked on that Bill and made some changes, but we did not make enough. Particularly, we were not able to deal with the very difficult section—which became Section 4 of the Act—which defines property as including: money and all other property, real or personal, including things in action and other intangible property". Those are very difficult words which possibly might have been modified so as to cover the situation in Preddy. Electricity was left out, as was gas, and there were all sorts of difficulties that we were not able to cure at that time.

The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, very well pointed out that the whole of the 1968 Act depended on the crucial and key word "dishonesty", which appears in Section 1, the main section of the Act, and also in Section 15, which deals with the case of a person who, by deception, dishonestly obtains property.

So the law already has to deal with a whole gamut of cases ranging over the whole field of human conduct, all brought under the word "dishonesty", which is not defined in the Act and which the judges have refused to interpret, saying that it is a jury matter. As the Law Commission puts it very well in paragraph 5.7 of the report: the law of dishonesty has failed to keep up with the ever-increasing complexity of modern commercial life". That is absolutely true. The Law Commission paper also shows very well that a particular action, such as that with which your Lordships were concerned in Preddy, a case of mortgage fraud, may fall within a whole range of overlapping cases uncovered by the existing Bill. The Law Commission examined it all and said, "Well, it might have been brought just under theft. It might have been called false accounting; it might have been called procuring execution of a valuable security; it might have been called evasion of liability". To use the words of the Law Commission, there is an enormous degree of overlap between existing offences. So, even though there is such a range of offences, Preddy slips through the net of them all. That is what the Bill seeks to remedy.

Of course, a repair job can be done, as the Bill aims to do in this case. Repair jobs can be done from case to case but it will not be long before another gap in the law appears. Again, as the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, hinted, the only remedy is a review of the whole area of dishonest behaviour, which is what the Law Commission itself is undertaking and was hoping to produce but could not do so in the time. One hopes that that will end not in an exhaustive—or even hopefully exhaustive—list of matters which are to be considered as dishonest or as theft, but in one or a few general propositions, which the judges and juries can work out.

I know that I am generally thought of as a codifier. I have often inflicted my views on that subject on this House. But there seems a very clear case in this area of the criminal law—I understand that the Law Commission itself agrees—for general clearing up of the offence of dishonesty and for bringing it under some general and intelligible conception, which can be understood and developed by the law in the proper way.

That being so, I have very little to say about the Bill itself at this stage. I shall perhaps just make two comments. First, I am not much enamoured of the list of immaterial matters to be found in subsection (4) of the new Section 15A. It is a list of matters which are supposed to be immaterial. That is doing the judges' work for them and doing it in a rather rigid way, which in time may cause more trouble. Some of the things are quite obvious and no sensible judge would decide otherwise; some may be slightly less obvious. I am not very happy about that list.

As to my second point, I find very difficult Clause 2 of the Bill, which introduces a new Section 24A. At first sight, it looks as though it deals with a general offence of retaining money to which one knows one is not entitled—one suddenly finds a favourable item in one's bank account. But the explanation—a very elaborate one—in Part VI of the Law Commission's report tells us that it is not that; it is in fact only a section, as my noble and learned friend explained, about handling stolen goods. One can work that out by following all through the references and by understanding the interesting examples in the report at paragraph 6.20. A slight element of confusion is added to by the fact that in those examples the criminal undergoes a mysterious sex change. He starts off by being "he" and finishes up by being "she". It is very interesting and very correct and it makes one think a little about the thinking behind the Bill.

We can consider those matters at a later stage. I simply register my difficulty in two respects. I agree entirely with the approach of the Bill in putting the new offences into what is called "Group A"—a curious shorthand for saying that extra territorial jurisdiction may be assumed if one of the elements takes place within the jurisdiction. Putting them into Group A is right. I agree also with the important decision which the commission argues well about not making it retrospective to existing offences.

The Bill is to be supported. One can only send it on its way with two further remarks. First, I congratulate—one cannot repeat this too often—the Law Commission on its extraordinary skill and energy in producing this carefully reasoned report in just over two months, covering the long vacation and with limited opportunity to consult. It is a remarkable achievement and shows what a good body we have in that commission. One must include in that, of course, my noble and learned friend for having taken on the Bill so rapidly.

The second and final point I cannot resist making is that the Bill and its procedure should leave us with an intense admiration for the British constitution. Here we have a law passed by Parliament in 1968 in which the judiciary took part—I took part and my noble and learned friend would have taken part if he had been there at that time. Then we have a judicial decision and it is decided that the Bill is defective. Who so decides? My noble and learned friend in his capacity as Senior Law Lord. We then have a new Bill brought in to remedy the defect. Who brings it in? My noble and learned friend in his capacity as legislator. In a short time we shall no doubt find somebody challenging the new Bill and saying it is defective and full of holes. Who will decide that? My noble and learned friend again. That is a totally admirable state of affairs and let us hear no more in this House about the division of powers.

That leaves us with two advantages. It leaves us with the advantage of all the experience and brilliant intelligence, if I may respectfully say so, of my noble and learned friend to help us. It also gives the members of the Appellate Committee when these cases go there, the ability of having the intricacies of the legislative processes explained to them by one who participated. We get the best of both worlds. We ought to rejoice in that and by no means touch it. Leave it quite alone. I am happy to support the Bill.

6.23 p.m.

Lord Donaldson of Lymington

My Lords, I am not entirely sure whether I ought to declare an interest and propose to do so, ex abundanti cautelâ. I do so not as a potential or intending mortgage fraudster, but as the chairman of the Financial Law Panel. That is a City-based non-profitmaking organisation whose task in life, sponsored by the Bank of England and the City Corporation, is to try to detect aspects of the law which hinder the smooth operation of the wholesale markets. In pursuit of that task it has been pressing for a long time for legislative amendment—or "repair" to use my noble friend's word—of the decision in Halai. However, it did not get very far. Then, happily from that point of view, we got the decision in Preddy and that decision achieved wonders which we, alas, failed to achieve.

I appreciate that the Law Commission is undertaking a wide-ranging review of all aspects of criminal dishonesty. I am sure that it will be taking fully into account the remarks made by my noble and learned friend Lord Wilberforce and my noble friend Lord Kingsland. It may also want to have a look at the law in Scotland, where I gather it is a great deal simpler. There is simply a common law offence of fraud. That is clearly not the place for this Bill, which is sharply focused—rightly so—on two loopholes which have been revealed by those decisions of the court.

I and, I know, the wholesale financial markets welcome wholeheartedly the introduction of the Bill. It meets a very real need. But, recognising as I do that the scope of the Bill is extremely limited—I am not talking about the Long Title or anything of that sort; I am talking about the objectives—nevertheless, I hope some consideration will be given to the position which arises in the case of the transfer of securities via Crest, Euroclear and Cedel. I am told that they operate on the basis that when A "transfers" securities to B, what he is actually doing is instructing Crest that he agrees to his right to delivery being extinguished and he would like Crest to create a new right of delivery to B (or was it A?) to whom he has sold the shares and to whom he wishes there to be a transfer.

That seems to me to be precisely the same situation as was met in Preddy, substituting "shares" for "money". As far as I can see it is not a criminal offence to achieve that result dishonestly for precisely the reasons given by this House in its judicial capacity in Preddy. An amendment could relatively simply be made by widening the relevant clause to include transfers of securities and doing the three-line exercise of saying that, where a right to delivery of shares is extinguished and, next, where a right to the delivery of shares is created and the two operations are linked together, then the offence is committed. I am not drafting; I am merely trying to indicate how closely analogous that situation is to the money transfers with which the Bill deals and to the reasoning in Preddy.

I wish the Bill a speedy passage. It is much needed.

6.27 p.m.

Viscount Colville of Culross

My Lords, I asked if I could interpose for one moment and I can conclude what I wish to say in a few sentences. First, I was involved in the 1968 Act. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, may well have been doing it rather better than I did, but the late Lord Dilhorne and I were on the Opposition Front Bench at the time and we did not get Section 15 right. Indeed, it has had to be amended since.

Perhaps I can tell your Lordships what is happening in the courts as a result of Preddy. Amendment after amendment of indictments is being put forward by the prosecution because of the obvious sense of what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goff, and his colleagues said. For the main part the defendants are pleading guilty or the trial goes ahead because the essence of it is exactly the same. But we have a situation whereby the whole of the basis of the prosecution has been undermined—perfectly properly; I do not criticise that in any way—by the opinions of your Lordships sitting judicially.

We therefore have a situation where, if we look at the front page of the Bill, under the "Financial Effects of the Bill", at the moment the fact is that case after case is coming back for amendment of the indictment and for new proceedings to be brought forward in a different way. The sooner that is stopped, the better, because it makes no difference to the essence of the case; it makes no difference to the question of the dishonesty or not, as the case may be, but it is costing money.

My last sentence is addressed to the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch: can we please get something on to the statute book very quickly, because it will be much easier to deal with criminal justice in the Crown Court if we have the law right?

6.31 p.m.

Lord Williams of Mostyn

My Lords, we support the thrust of this Bill without reservation. This is a model, it seems to us, of how to attend to law reform. The judgment of the Judicial Committee was delivered, as was said earlier, on 10th July, and the report was agreed by the Law Commission as early as 18th September. That is really a remarkable achievement in a difficult area of the law. It is heartening to see that the commission under the chairmanship of Mrs. Justice Arden is determined to continue the excellent work of law reform carried out under the chairmanship of her predecessor, Lord Justice Brooke. On these occasions, when there is no party or partisan disagreement, it is incumbent on us all to put law reform into action where there is really no excuse for delay.

I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, that the whole law of theft is in urgent need of simplification and modernisation. I also agree with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Donaldson of Lymington, said, which was to the effect that this short Bill can only be a staging post which needs to be subsumed into the greater work of the modernisation of the law of theft, always bearing in mind that new means will be found as the instruments of theft. It used to be said in the United States that many more millions per year are dishonestly obtained at the point of a pen than at the point of a gun. That is certainly true in this country. But, alas, it is not the pen any more, it is the electronic transfer and the subtle variations which are going to be the mischief.

Of course, it may be that another corrective to the mischief is that there should be sentences as long for commercial fraud as there are for armed robbery and burglary, but that is another topic. Obviously, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goff of Chieveley, pointed out in his masterly exposition, there was a significant dishonest mischief which was obliged to go unchecked. This will not be the last occasion when we have to revert to this.

I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, in raising the question about the list of immaterialities, because clever defence lawyers—and many such there are, I am told—will seize upon the list of immaterialities and point out that x was not included in the list and therefore, far from being immaterial, it is absolutely material and therefore his client must be triumphantly acquitted.

By and large, this is a useful measure. It is a limited measure for the reasons I sought to suggest earlier. I see—and I address this remark, without necessarily teasing, to the noble Baroness the Minister—that the effect of the Bill on public service manpower is not expected to be significant. I do hope that that is wrong and that many more prison cells will be filled by those who ought to be filling them.

6.36 p.m.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Blatch)

My Lords, I have noted all that has been said during this very short but very important debate, and in particular the comments made by my noble friend Lord Kingsland and those made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, and other noble Lords. I, too, wish to join my noble friend Lord Kingsland in thanking the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goff of Chieveley, for agreeing to sponsor the Bill and for his incredibly clear and lucid explanation of its provisions and merits. His knowledge of the subject is, of course, unrivalled and it is for that reason that I shall confine my remarks about the debate to the general rather than the particular.

The Bill, although short, is highly technical. We have heard something of its history. Its chief purpose is to deal with the effects of the House of Lords judgment in R v. Preddy. The judgment turned on whether transfers between bank accounts result in the same property passing from one account to another. The Law Lords concluded that in law this is not so and that, when money is debited from one account, the sum credited to another account is not the same property that had left the first account. The effect of this is that acquiring a credit by deception is not an offence. Clearly, we could not leave the law in the state that the Preddy judgment created. To do so would have made it very difficult to prosecute for such fraud in the future, and would have left existing convictions open to challenge.

Following the Preddy judgment, the Law Commission stepped into the breach, and I would like to join with all noble Lords in paying tribute at this point to the speed and thoroughness of their work, which has been welcomed in both the financial and legal worlds. It is a significant achievement, as the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, said, to react so quickly and effectively to a problem, and to come to a conclusion that is so widely accepted. The Government accepted the Law Commission's recommendations immediately they were published. Parliament must now act with equal speed and legislate to close the loophole in the law with which we are faced.

The Theft (Amendment) Bill before the House embodies the Law Commission's earlier work on mortgage fraud, contained in their report Conspiracy to Defraud, and the proposals to reverse the effects of Preddy which were contained in their report Offences of Dishonesty: Money Transfers. The Bill creates two new offences of dishonestly obtaining a money transfer by deception, and of retaining credits from dishonest sources. It also amends the Theft Act to enable loans to be treated as services that can be obtained by deception.

I should like to say to my noble friend Lord Kingsland that, as has already been recognised by a number of speakers tonight, the Law Commission is looking at the whole issue of the law of dishonesty, which I understand will also take into account the workings of the Theft Act. As was noted by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Donaldson of Lymington, this is a much needed Bill. As the noble and learned Lord said, it is tightly focused. It will not inhibit in any way the work being undertaken by the Law Commission. In the words of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, we will act with as much speed as we possibly can.

I shall not delay the House by repeating in detail what has already been said about the content of the Bill. The Government's main concern is that the serious defects in the law on fraud should be remedied. The clauses of the Bill achieve this. Our chief objective now is to see that this short but essential measure is piloted through Parliament as quickly as possible. Therefore, I trust that this Bill will be given a Second Reading. I certainly commend it to the House.

6.39 p.m.

Lord Goff of Chieveley

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lords and the noble Baroness for their most constructive comments on this important Bill. As always, I listened to my noble and learned friend Lord Wilberforce with the same spirit of veneration with which I have read his judgments for over 35 years. The comments he made will of course be taken on board, as will those made by other noble Lords and the noble Baroness in the course of their speeches.

There is certainly a review taking place at the Law Commission now of a whole range of dishonest behaviour. In my speech in the case of Preddy I drew attention to the extraordinary simplicity of the law of Scotland on this point, and I have urged the Law Commission to take advantage of the presence in your Lordships' House of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, who was formerly a Lord President and is now one of the Law Lords.

I have also taken note of the point made by my noble and learned friend Lord Donaldson about the transfer of securities. I shall certainly draw that to the attention of the Law Commission and consideration will be given to the question of whether a specific provision should be introduced into the Bill dealing with that particular point.

I do not believe it is necessary for me to say any more at this stage. I respectfully ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.

On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.