Civil Liability Bill [HL]

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 24th April 2018 Lords Chamber

Second Reading

15:21

Moved by

[Lord Keen of Elie]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

Relevant document: 22nd Report from the Delegated Powers Committee

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)]

My Lords, the Bill makes important changes to our personal injury compensation system. It is about making that system fairer, more certain and more sustainable in the future for claimants, defendants, the taxpayer and motorists. This builds on our wider reforms to cut the cost of civil justice claims and strengthen the regulation of claims management companies.

The first part of the Bill will deliver a key manifesto pledge: to support hard-working families by bringing down the cost of living through a crackdown on exaggerated and fraudulent whiplash claims, which lead to higher insurance costs. The second part of the Bill will provide a fairer method for setting the personal injury discount rate. It will, for the first time, use a new, regular, more transparent mechanism in which the Lord Chancellor consults independent experts before setting the rate. We aim to provide full compensation for seriously injured claimants while being fair to those, particularly the National Health Service, who bear the cost of paying. We believe that the Bill will provide a compensation system that meets the rightful needs of claimants while saving the public money, both as consumers and taxpayers. About three-quarters of the United Kingdom motor and liability insurance market has already committed publicly, through a letter published on 20 March, to ensure that any savings resulting from enactment of the Bill will be passed on to the public.

I begin with the issue of whiplash. DWP data shows that around 650,000 RTA-related personal injury claims were made in 2017-18. That is nearly 200,000 more than in 2005-06—a rise of 40%. If we take the 10 years following 2005-06, the rise is around 70%. We estimate that around 85% of these are for whiplash-related injuries—higher than in any other European jurisdiction —yet Department for Transport figures show that in the decade up to 2016-17, reported road traffic accidents went from around 190,000 to around 135,000—a fall of 30%. Many claims will, of course, be genuine and the Government would never seek to deny justice to those who suffer injury; it is absolutely right that individuals are compensated for genuine injuries. However, by 2016-17, there were around 670,000 whiplash claims in the United Kingdom. That number is too high and the costs to motorists and consumers too great. It comes despite major improvements in motoring safety, such as the increased use of integrated seat and head restraints. We must ask ourselves what is going wrong.

The reality is that some of these claims are not genuine. Last year the insurance industry identified 69,000 motor insurance claims that it considered fraudulent. By their very nature, these claims are difficult to detect, so I ask the House to consider that the problem goes much further than this already significant number. That the number is so high is indicative of an ever-pervading compensation culture in this country. The knock-on effect of this has been to drive up insurance premiums. I would go as far as to say that, for some, it has become socially acceptable to make a whiplash claim for little or no injury. Noble Lords may have seen examples in the media of exaggerated or fraudulent whiplash claims, such as the man making a claim after his car was slowly reversed into in a supermarket car park. It transpired that he was not in the car at the time.

As the House will no doubt agree, the purpose is to compensate those for whom genuine injury has occurred. Our reforms seek to reduce and control the costs of whiplash claims and to disincentivise people making fraudulent or unmeritorious claims. The level of compensation paid out for such claims is, in the Government’s view, out of all proportion to any genuine injury suffered, especially when balanced against its effect on the price of premiums paid by ordinary motorists. Insurance industry figures show that in 2017 car insurance premiums rose at the fastest rate ever. Though there are other contributing factors, without reform to whiplash claims those increases are estimated by the ABI to continue at an alarming rate—potentially 10% per year. For many people—particularly those in rural communities—owning a car is not a choice: it is a necessity. Higher insurance premiums hit young and elderly motorists particularly hard. That is why we pledged in our manifesto to bring down the cost of motoring. The Bill can and will do that.

The measures in the Bill relating to whiplash will therefore address a number of issues. They will introduce a ban on settling whiplash claims without medical evidence. This will discourage fraudulent claims and encourage insurers to investigate claims properly, providing fairness and certainty for claimants, so they do not feel pressurised into accepting an offer before knowing the true extent of their injuries. They will provide for a new system of fixed tariffs for payments for pain, suffering and “loss of amenity” in whiplash claims. This will give claimants proportionate compensation while controlling the costs of claims. The final tariff figures will be set in regulations to be debated via the affirmative procedure by Parliament following Royal Assent. The judiciary will have discretion to increase the compensation payable in exceptional circumstances, with the cap set in supporting regulations. The whiplash reform programme also includes measures not in the scope of this Bill, to increase the small claims track limit for road traffic accident personal injury claims to £5,000 and for all other personal injury claims to £2,000.

The measures in the whole reform programme are fair and proportionate. They will prevent fraudulent and unmeritorious whiplash claims from driving up insurances costs, allowing insurers to pass on savings of about £1.1.billion a year to consumers. This would mean an average reduction in car insurance premiums for consumers of around £35 a year. As a Government we fully intend to hold the market to account in making sure that happens.

I now turn to the second part of the Bill, the personal injury discount rate. Fairness and sustainability are at the heart of our reforms. With any change to the system for compensating the seriously injured, we must keep in mind the person behind every claim. The Government continue to support the aim that seriously injured people should receive 100% compensation to meet expected future financial losses, including medical and care costs. The way compensation is calculated must be fair to both claimants and defendants, including the National Health Service.

This Bill will reform the personal injury discount rate, which adjusts a compensation lump sum to allow for the return a claimant is expected to receive by investing it over the period of the award. Currently at minus 0.75%, we have one of lowest rates in the world. In Germany, it is 4%; in France it is 1.2%, and in Ireland it is 1%. The current rate consistently compensates for injury at more than the 100% required by law. Awards currently average 120% to 125% even after management costs and tax. This is putting huge pressure on the National Health Service in claims for clinical negligence. Last year, the NHS spent £1.7 billion on such cases, a cost that has almost doubled since 2010-11, with an unsustainable average increase of 11.5% every year.

The current legal framework requires the Lord Chancellor to assume claimants to be very risk-averse investors, and the discount rate has been set since 1998 with reference to returns on very low-risk investments—index-linked UK gilts. This is unrealistic. In reality, claimants do not behave as very low-risk investors; they invest their compensation in diversified low-risk portfolios and on average receive higher returns than is assumed under the present law. This results in inflated payments for claims which overly penalise defendants.

Every pound spent on overcompensation could instead be spent on front-line public services: in our hospitals, our schools and our Armed Forces. We will therefore do a number of things in the Bill. We will provide for the discount rate to be set in future by reference to how evidence indicates claimants actually invest, giving a more realistic rate that will mean that injured parties with low-risk investment appetites still receive full and fair compensation and ensure that defendants, including the NHS, are not left shouldering the burden of overcompensation.

We shall provide for the first time that the Lord Chancellor should set the rate regularly—at least every three years—and must do so after expert advice from an independent panel which protects the interests of claimants, as well as defendants, by ensuring that the rate is grounded in investment practices and market conditions.

Transparency and fairness in setting the rate were two of the main concerns voiced by the Justice Select Committee, and we have responded to that in setting out our position in the Bill. Changes to the discount rate will affect only lump-sum payments for future financial loss. They will not affect periodical payment orders, which account for a significant proportion of the compensation paid for future loss in the cases involving the most serious and long-term injuries.

Periodical payment orders are annual, risk-free payments providing a steady stream of income which is not affected by the discount rate, allowing claimants to plan for their long-term needs. PPOs are available from the National Health Service in all negligence cases, including those involving brain damage during birth, and in almost all cases where the defendant is insured by a UK-regulated insurer. A court is able to provide protection by ordering a PPO where it believes that it is in the claimant’s interest. In any event, for serious long-term injuries, claimants will continue to be able to rely on the National Health Service as any other person would.

These reforms will reduce spending pressure on the NHS. The NHS Confederation and other influential medical bodies have described how the change last year in the discount rate exacerbated the financial impacts of clinical negligence claims. These higher litigation costs against the NHS are now unsustainable.

This fairer approach to setting the discount rate could, assuming a rate between 0% and 1%, save the taxpayer between £250 million and £550 million per year and, in turn, mean savings to insurers of between £0.5 billion and £1.5 billion per year, to be passed on to consumers in the form of lower insurance premiums.

Alongside our wider work to reform the civil justice system and, through the Financial Guidance and Claims Bill, strengthen the regulatory regime for claims management companies and ban cold calling, the reforms contained in the Civil Liability Bill are needed to put personal injury payments on a fair, more certain and sustainable footing for the future. In turn, they will save the NHS and consumer money. Legislating to ensure that genuine whiplash claims are backed by medical evidence, and that claimants receive proportionate compensation, will reduce the number and cost of whiplash claims. This will allow insurers to pass on savings to consumers, and, as I have said, three-quarters of the UK motor and liability insurance market has already publicly committed to doing so.

In changing the system by which the discount rate is set we want to continue to ensure fairness, so that those who suffer catastrophic personal injury get 100% compensation, within a more informed and transparent system in which the rate is set by the Lord Chancellor at regular intervals, with the benefit of independent expert advice, in the interest of claimants. I commend the Bill to the House and I beg to move.

15:35

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin by referring to my interest as an unpaid consultant with my former solicitors’ firm, and to a paternal interest, inasmuch as my daughter is a barrister and a part-time deputy district judge.

This Bill, as the noble and learned Lord has reminded us, covers two discrete areas of personal injury law: claims for damages for whiplash injuries, and the way compensation for financial loss in serious injury claims, by way of lump sums, is to be calculated. The former is, in effect, a response to exaggerated claims. Exaggeration is, however, not confined—as the media, the insurance industry and the Government would have us believe—to claimants and their advisers. A small number of insurance companies, operating under a variety of labels in the market, constantly claim that the number and cost of damages claims for whiplash injuries is rising, with a consequential impact on premiums, which would otherwise be lower.

We are all familiar with the benevolent intentions of the industry and its heartfelt aspiration to reduce premiums. A degree of scepticism about the industry’s case, is, however, justified. In his seminal report, Common Sense, Common Safety, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, who it was a pleasure to see in the House yesterday, declared:

“The problem of the compensation culture prevalent in society today is, however, one of perception rather than reality”.


Road traffic accident claims have fallen by 14% since 2013 and by 10% in the past year, while last year the number of claims relative to the number of vehicles on the road was the lowest since 2008. Interestingly, the latest data published—just today—by the Compensation Recovery Unit records a fall in the number of motor cases registered to the unit from 780,000 in 2016-17 to 650,000 in 2017-18. The numbers between 2010-11 and 2017-18 ranged from 828,000 to 761,000. Settlements recorded by the CRU were, at 683,000, the lowest since 2011. Moreover, the cost of such claims in the UK is in the lower half of the European league table of such costs.

There is a legitimate concern, to which the noble and learned Lord has referred, about the activities of claims management companies—and indeed of “McKenzie friends”, a growing feature in the courts these days in this and other areas—about which little or no action has so far been taken, either by the Government, or, in relation to connections between solicitors’ firms and such companies by the Law Society, which I find somewhat deplorable.

In any event, in practice the proposals will impose a tariff system for compensation for pain and discomfort ranging from £235 for up to three months to £3,910 for 18 to 24 months—respectively 76% and 49% less than the guidelines prescribed by the Judicial College. Crucially, the system is entirely based on the timescale, and not the severity, of the pain and suffering endured. These replace, for road traffic cases, payments which the MoJ—without adducing any evidence—regards as “out of all proportion” to the level of injury suffered. Having said that, I welcome the provision that no case should be settled without a medical report.

Someone suffering a comparable injury sustained otherwise than from a road traffic accident—for example, a workplace accident—with effects lasting two years, could recover £3,000 more in damages and the costs of the claim, which, in RTA cases, would in future have to be paid out of the damages and not by the defendant.

Some noble Lords may be aware that a few weeks ago I sustained an injury, which left me with a colourful presentation around my eye, when I was thrown to the floor in a Tube train that made a violent, sudden halt. It was not a soft-tissue injury but if it had been—I suppose it could have been in those circumstances—any claim would not have been affected by the provisions of the Bill, whereas it would if I had been a passenger in a road vehicle. Some friends of mine recently experienced precisely that kind of accident. The question arises: why should comparable injuries not attract comparable awards, and comparable recovery of the cost of a claim, whether they are incurred in a road traffic accident or any other accident for which a defendant is deemed liable?

There are, moreover, serious questions to be asked not just about the scale of damages deemed recoverable but about how the level of damages is to be determined and by whom. The 22nd report of the Delegated Powers Committee asks some salient questions and makes some powerful comments on the way the Government are proceeding. It poses what it describes as two central questions:

“What is meant by ‘whiplash injury’?”,


and:

“By how much are awards of damages to be reduced?”.


The answer it divines is:

“‘Whiplash injury’ means whatever the Lord Chancellor says it will mean, in regulations to be made by him or her at some future date”,


with “a full definition” emerging once the Bill is enacted and not before. It also observes:

“Given the complex physical and psychological components of whiplash injury, it is not satisfactory that these matters should be left to regulations rather than being subject to a rigorous debate in Parliament”—


a refrain all too frequently heard in this House in relation to secondary legislation. As to the second question, about the quantum of damages, the committee points out that the reduction,

“will be whatever the Lord Chancellor says it will be, in regulations to be made … at some future date”.

The Government pray in aid the need for what they say is,

“flexibility ... to reflect possible changes in society’s perception of the value of”,

pain, suffering and loss awards over time and a possible need,

“to change the parameters of the categories of the tariff to adjust or refine the approach to different severities of injury should this become necessary in future and in the light of experience over time”.

Those are two possible candidates, I suggest, for the Nobel Prize for vacuity. Unsurprisingly, the committee was less than impressed by these responses and in five sub-paragraphs it demolished the Government’s position, pointing out that the need for possible updating figures or mechanisms does not justify a failure to include them initially in primary legislation.

Rather than relying yet again on unamendable statutory instruments, Acts of Parliament are to be preferred for this, and for quantifying damages, and are equally preferable where,

“society’s perception of the value of”,

pain, suffering and loss claims changes over time. Equally, it said:

“The need to refine the tariff in relation to different severities of injury”,


can be accommodated by a new Act.

Crucially, the committee avers that the judiciary, with its long experience of personal injury claims, should determine the provision for damages or, failing that, responsibility should be undertaken by independent medical experts. Its emphatic conclusion is that,

“it would be an inappropriate delegation of power for damages for whiplash injury to be set in a tariff made by Ministerial regulations rather than on the face of the Bill”,

and that the initial tariff,

“should be set out on the face of the Bill, albeit amendable by affirmative statutory instrument”,

in the future, following further recommendations by the judiciary or an expert panel. This of course echoes repeated expressions of concern about the use, and indeed abuse, of delegated legislation, with the limited opportunities afforded to persuade Governments to think again and respond to concerns expressed in either House. Will Ministers delegate the decision on this critical issue, as suggested by the committee, albeit subjecting any recommendations for approval under the affirmative procedure? My suggestion would be that the decision should be made by an advisory panel or the judiciary. Then, if we are proceeding by the secondary legislation procedure, the Lord Chancellor should embody that recommendation in an affirmative order.

Much is being made of promises made by the insurance companies that savings will be passed on to their customers. Indeed, the Minister has repeated that today. Can he say what estimate of such savings has been made over time and what is their current level? How will we ensure that the industry delivers on the promise, and in what form? The Minister has said that it will, but how will that be ensured? Can he also tell us how much the Government have raised in the form of insurance premium tax since the standard rate rose from 5% in January 2011 to 12% in 2017, and for the higher rate from 17% to 20% in the same period? I recall once suggesting a small percentage increase in insurance premium tax some years ago to fund a reduction in the savage cuts to legal aid made by the coalition Government, but that, unsurprisingly, never materialised. The Minister may not have those figures to hand, but it would be interesting to see them in due course.

There is real concern about the pending increase in the small claims level, which, apart from the £5,000 limit chosen for whiplash claims—however loosely defined— will now be set at £2,000 by the Lord Chancellor. Below that figure, noble Lords will be aware that costs are not awarded. This is significantly higher than would be the case if the existing level was increased to reflect inflation. I have seen two suggested figures for that: £1,400 and £1,600, but these are still significantly lower than the £2,000 now prescribed. If we are to retain the system, should it not be on the basis of RPI or CPI, reviewed every three years as a matter of course? Interestingly, I understand that Scotland has chosen not to apply its version of the small claims regime, known as the simple procedure, to personal injury claims up to £5,000 such that, successful parties in these cases, described as “summary causes”, can recover their costs. Given the Minister’s role as Lord Advocate and his deserved reputation as one of the most eminent Scottish lawyers, would he encourage the Lord Chancellor to look again at the small claims limits?

In light of the current impossibility of successful claimants claiming costs or obtaining legal aid, has the Ministry of Justice made or received any assessment of the impact on the court system of more unrepresented claimants in this area of the law? There is existing concern, which has been voiced several times in your Lordships’ House and elsewhere.

Finally, in relation to this part of the Bill, I revert to the issue of claims management companies: a parasitic growth in our justice system, seemingly able to pursue potential clients via cold calling and seek disproportionately large fees out of the modest damages recovered. I understand that the Government are looking at this matter, but can the Minister indicate how this unacceptable approach might be curbed?

Part 2 of the Bill deals with the discount rate, which is, as the Minister explained, the rate used to calculate the level of damages to be awarded in the most serious cases, having regard to investment returns and inflation. We are looking here at cases of very serious injuries with life-changing consequences that might last a very long time. The Government are proposing a change from very low-risk investments to low-risk as the basis for calculating compensation. It is, however, inherently difficult to predict what future loss or cost of care or treatment would be occasioned in such cases. Greater reliance on periodical payment orders, to which the Minister referred, would help. Can he update us on government thinking on this aspect and how they might be promoted? His evidence to the Justice Committee implied support for this approach, and that is welcome.

The NHS is in a curious position on the issue of damages. Treatment in such cases can be expensive and the NHS must be compensated for costs incurred where the damage is inflicted by a third party, but sometimes the NHS is the defendant, as in clinical negligence cases, but also potentially in other cases, where the negligence is not related to clinical error. Accidents can take place on NHS premises, for which the NHS is liable.

It is in all our interests that the NHS should not see its resources reduced by the requirement to pay large sums to unfortunate patients who have suffered from clinical negligence. However, surely such compensation payments should be funded out of general taxation rather than being avoided by requiring the victims of clinical negligence to take greater risks in investing the proceeds of damages. We surely all agree that the NHS should be protected but the question is: by what method? My submission is that the method that the Government are proposing will ultimately perhaps be at the expense of the people who have been injured rather than of the community collectively, and I invite the Government to think again about that aspect.

The House will wish to give careful consideration to the changes proposed in the Bill. I trust that in doing so we will put the interests of the victims of negligence at the top of our deliberations, but also that we will ensure that crucial decisions are made not by ministerial fiat but with the full involvement of the judiciary and are subject to proper parliamentary scrutiny.

15:50

[Lord Sharkey (LD)]

My Lords, I will deal first with the proposal to reform the compensation for whiplash arising from road traffic accidents. Let me say at once that I agree with the remarks made by the Delegated Powers Committee in its report of last Friday. It concluded, as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has said, that there should be a definition of whiplash in the Bill, as should the tariff for damages. The committee says bluntly that it would be,

“an inappropriate delegation of power”,

for either of these matters to be handled by secondary legislation. The definition of whiplash is so central to any discussion of the Bill and any assessment of its consequences that I am very surprised that the Bill should have been brought before us with that definition absent. It is clear that the issue of how to define whiplash has been under consideration by the Government for some time. Surely it should be possible either to produce the definition for the Bill or to delay the Bill until the definition is available.

That is certainly a matter that we want to raise in Committee, as is the issue of the tariff and who should set it. Should it be, for example, the Judicial College? The impact assessment sets out the proposed tariff, but why is the proposed tariff not in the Bill? The structure and levels of the tariff will certainly influence our debates, and Parliament should be able to decide on the initial tariff, amendable later by secondary legislation.

In the case for reforms set out in the assessment there are many appeals to evidence, a lot of which is vigorously contested. That throws some doubt on the case for reform, but it would be very helpful if the Minister was willing to discuss these contested areas before we reach Committee. For example, there is the assertion that the number of whiplash claims is somehow too high or too fraudulent. The Access to Justice Foundation has published calculations showing that claims in total are already falling. In fact, as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has pointed out, CRU data for 2016-17 shows a 10% decline in whiplash or whiplash-related claims since 2012-13. The Motor Accident Solicitors Society has strongly questioned the view that a high proportion of claims are fraudulent. It has said that, when proven and suspected fraud figures are disaggregated, proven fraud drops to 0.25% of all motor claims, while fraudulent whiplash claims will be a small percentage of that already small percentage.

The principal justification in the impact assessment for reforms is economic—specifically, that there are three market failures that must be addressed. The first failure is one of asymmetric information. Only a victim can really know the extent and duration of pain or suffering caused by a whiplash injury. The Government see this as an incentive to make false or exaggerated claims but, as I have mentioned, the incidence of such claims is highly contested.

The second market failure alleged by the Government is the creation of perverse incentives. Legal costs are recoverable by successful claimants from the defendants. The Government say that if legal fees were not, or less, recoverable, claimants would bear more of the cost of bringing such claims, which would help to bring down their volume to a level that was,

“optimal for society as a whole”.

Leaving aside the question of what “optimal” might mean or how it might be calculated in this context, there is the problem of access to justice, as noted by the Law Society in its comments on the Bill. The Access to Justice Foundation has estimated that the proposed new tariff would deny 600,000 people injured on our roads each year the right to legal advice when seeking compensation. The figure comes from a July 2017 study by Capital Economics. Then there is the question of whether, or more likely to what extent, making medical report costs unrecoverable impedes access to justice.

The third identified market failure is what the impact assessment calls, “negative externality”—a phrase that is clearly weapons-grade management speak. This refers to the practice of insurance companies settling claims without medical proof of injury. Here, I entirely agree that this drives market failure, and I support the provisions in the Bill that will ban this practice.

In addition to the reduction in access to justice likely to be brought about by these reform proposals, there is the obvious issue of fairness. If someone is involved, as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has said, in a road accident, under the Government’s reform proposals they would be entitled to £3,500 for a neck injury lasting 24 months. They would also be unable to recover the cost of a lawyer to assert their rights. If someone suffered an identical injury at work, they would be entitled to £6,500 and would be able to recover costs. How is this fair, reasonable or coherent? I should be very grateful if the Minister could address this issue when he replies.

In all the very comprehensive information supplied to us by the Minister and his officials, I have been unable to find any mention of vulnerable road users. They are cyclists, motorcyclists, horse-riders and pedestrians. These people seldom suffer whiplash, and I have seen no evidence of fraud, yet they will all be caught by the proposed new system. I hope that the Minister will agree to remove them from the scope of this Bill.

Then there is the question of who benefits from these proposed reforms. The impact assessment estimates a total net benefit of £130 million. Within this, motorists gain £l.l billion by way of reduced premiums; insurers gain £190 million; HMT—the Treasury—loses around £140 million; and claimants lose £980 million. The impact assessment also sets out the risks assumed in calculating these figures. It explicitly acknowledges the risk that CMCs will produce more unmeritorious claims to offset the reduction in claims pursued as a result of the reforms. We all know how very vigorous and fast moving the claims industry can be, and as we speak, the Government are busy in the other place dismantling the reforms that we voted through to try to suppress cold calling.

However, the major risk surely lies in the percentage of savings to insurance companies that is passed on to motorists in reduced premiums. The impact assessment gives a figure on this and says it will be 85%, but it does not explain why. Is it, for example, that 85% of all savings will be passed on by 100% of insurers or that 100% of savings will be passed on by 85% by value of insurers? Perhaps the Minister could tell us which it is. In either case, what grounds are there for confidence that the insurers will pass on any particular percentage?

I note that the insurance companies which wrote to the Lord Chancellor in March ended their letter by saying that they,

“publicly commit to passing on to customers cost benefits arising from Government action to tackle the extent of exaggerated low value personal injury claims”.

Leaving aside the issue of whether cost benefits are the same as savings—I have no idea whether they are—is the promise to pass on all or only some of the cost benefits? Who decides what is a cost benefit for the purpose of passing it on, and how transparent will this decision be? What mechanism will there be for checking the sums actually passed on, and what remedy will be available if they turn out to be lower than expected?

I now turn to Part 2 of the Bill, dealing with the personal injury discount rate, and I should say at the outset that I agree there is an urgent need to change the basis on which the rate is calculated. But I have several concerns. The first is to do with timing. It is clear that the current discount rate needs amending, but the process proposed in the Bill means that there would be no change until 2020. This is three years after the implementation of the minus 0.75% rate, which is obviously wrong and is causing very significant financial damage to both private and public sector organisations. For example, the Minister will know that the National Audit Office has highlighted that the estimate from NHS Resolution, at the current discount rate, will add £500 million to the cost of claims in the year 2017-18 and £3.5 billion in overall provisions accrued. Clearly, it would be better to spend this money on front-line NHS services. Why wait? Surely there is enough information held by the Government and their advisers to enable a faster change.

My second concern is with the review period of three years that is proposed in the Bill. This may be too short. It may mean that a review is undertaken unnecessarily, incurring cost and creating market uncertainty. A three-year period may also create real incentives for gaming the litigation process by whichever side believes its objectives are most likely to be met by an impending rate change. A five-year review period, I suggest, would mitigate the risks associated with this. We will probably want to discuss this further in Committee.

My third concern is with having the Lord Chancellor make the decision on the rate, as at present. Under the new system, he or she will have the recommendation of the expert panel to take into account, but this will not be binding. How is this materially different from the current situation? Of course, the basis for setting the rate will have changed, but it will still be the Lord Chancellor who decides. In fact, there is a strong case for removing the decision from the political arena altogether and handing it over to an expert panel. The impact assessment reports that, of the respondents to the consultation on the matter, 35 favoured an expert panel, 17 favoured a co-decision between an expert panel and another person, and 48 favoured a Minister, based on advice from an expert panel. To put this another way, the majority of respondents to the consultation were in favour of not having the Minister make the decision. This kind of system works well for the economy as a whole, with the MPC setting the base rate quite independently of politicians. Perhaps the Minister can say whether he has considered this option and, if he has, why he has rejected it.

Finally, I would like to make a suggestion to the Minister. He will know that many Members of this House believe that we should repeal Section 2(4) of the Law Reform (Personal Injuries) Act 1948, which has the effect of greatly increasing the sums that the NHS must pay out in settlement of clinical negligence claims. The Public Bill Office has confirmed that any proposal to repeal this section via this Bill would be out of scope. Nevertheless, repeal is an urgent necessity, and suitable legislative vehicles are likely to be extremely rare. This Bill could be used for repeal if the Government were to agree to an out-of-scope amendment granting the right to repeal Section 2(4). In closing, I ask the Minister to consider this, and whether he would be prepared to meet to discuss this further with me and other interested Members.

16:03

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I do not wish to say very much about the general principle that lies behind Part 1, which deals with damages for whiplash injuries, except to make three points. First, we have been subjected to quite a bit of lobbying by those who object to the measures that it contains. Some, I have noted, say that they are punitive and arbitrary—words which I myself would not attribute to Part 1 as I read it. Indeed, the noble and learned Lord has said enough to persuade me that it is necessary to do something to try to minimise the abuse that has given rise to such a large and disproportionate number of whiplash claims. The abuse has been going on for some considerable time, and it is time that something was done to address it.

My second point is that I particularly welcome the provisions in Clause 3 for an uplift beyond the tariff amount in exceptional circumstances and the provision in Clause 2(8) which deals with the situation where a whiplash injury is combined with other injuries which also require to be compensated. Those are sensible precautions against the risk of unfairness in particular cases. Thirdly, I associate myself—at least for the time being—with the remarks of the noble Lords, Lord Beecham and Lord Sharkey, on the need for thought to be given to putting the definition of the phrase “whiplash injury” in the Bill, rather than leaving it to delegated legislation, because it is so central to the whole system set out in this part. There is something to be said for at least the starting point of the tariff to be in the Bill too, although, of course, amendable in as simple a way as possible by statutory instrument.

My reason for speaking in this debate is that I would like to say a bit more about the personal injury discount rate provided for in Part 2. My reason for doing so is that I was one of the members of the Appellate Committee which heard the case of Wells v Wells 20 years ago in May 1998. Power was first given to the Lord Chancellor to set a discount rate by Section 1 of the Damages Act 1996, when the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, was Lord Chancellor. I very much look forward to hearing what he has to say when he contributes to the debate later. I hope to be in the Chamber when he speaks, although I have other things to do. For reasons that he may be able to explain, he did not set a discount rate before the Government changed shortly after the Act came into force.

The baton passed to his successor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, who was here earlier but is no longer in his place to listen to the rest of the debate. He did not indicate that he was willing to exercise that power. One might sympathise with him, because of the difficulties in finding a solution to it. In that situation, it was left to us in Wells to deal with the issue and to devise what we thought would be a firm and workable principle which the courts could apply. The solution which we derived in that case set out the basic principle which was applied by the Lord Chancellor when, in due course, the power was exercised in June 2001 and again in March last year, resulting in the figure to which the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, referred. As is stated in the Explanatory Notes, Wells provided the basis for the calculation of the discount rate which has been followed ever since.

I certainly do not wish to quarrel with the proposition that a fresh look needs to be taken at this problem. It is, of course, an inescapable fact that the lower the discount rate, the higher the award will be. So there is a tension between those who wish to raise the rate so as to reduce the burden on those who have to bear the cost of the award and those who do not wish to see a reduction in the general level of damages where the award has to provide compensation for future loss. The Explanatory Notes say that the basis of calculation which was held in Wells to be appropriate is that the claimant is a very risk-averse investor. I do not think that any of us on the Appellate Committee used those very words, but the thrust of our judgment was similar to what the Explanatory Notes say, for reasons that I will explain.

The Bill seeks to change this assumption by substituting that which is set out in paragraph 3(3)(d) of the proposed new Schedule Al to the Damages Act 1996. This is that the damages will be invested adopting an approach which involves more risk than a very low level of risk, but less risk than would ordinarily be accepted by a prudent and properly advised investor. How one reacts to that proposal may well depend on how essential it will be for the claimant to be able to rely on the award to provide for his or her needs for the rest of their life. Claims that require recourse to the discount rate vary widely, from those in which the main element is to make good a relatively small element of future wage loss to those where the award has to provide for the future care and support of those who are very seriously injured.

As it happens, the claimants whose cases we were dealing with in Wells had all sustained very serious injuries of the kind which are normally classified as injuries of the maximum severity. In one case, the claimant had suffered serious brain injuries, as a result of which she was no longer capable of working or looking after herself or her family. In another, the claimant had been injured before birth, was suffering from cerebral palsy and was very severely handicapped.

It was against that background that, in my speech in Wells, I said that the assumptions that had to be made were, first, that the lump sum would be invested in such a way as to enable the claimant to meet the whole amount of the losses or costs as they arise as the years go by during the entire period for the assumed lifetime while protecting the award against inflation, and, secondly, that the losses or costs will have to be met entirely out of the relevant proportion of the lump sum. Those assumptions indicate the challenge that lies behind the exercise that we are contemplating. I went on to say that this meant that the rate should be one that is to be expected where the investment is without risk and which takes full account of the effects of inflation.

As Lord Lloyd of Berwick, who was with us on the committee, said, if the claimant has to realise capital from investments in a depressed market—and, as we know, the markets go up and down—the depleted fund may never recover. We were aware that a lower rate of discount would lead to increased insurance premiums. We were not addressed in detail on this subject, so we were not in a position to form a view about the wider consequences of our judgment. However, it is worth noting that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Steyn—who was also on the committee—pointed out that if the right decision was that the discount rate should be modified to ensure that victims were compensated as nearly as possible for the consequences of their injury, by and large the public would have to pay for the increase in awards. He said that because he was applying the principle which lies at the heart of the assessment of damages at common law, which is to provide injured parties with a sum which will be adequate to cover their loss over the whole of period during which the loss is likely to continue: no more, but certainly no less.

The noble and learned Lord talked about transparency and fairness, but there is no doubt that Part 2 seeks to alter the balance in favour of the public and thus, to an extent, undermine the principle that lies behind the common law. Reasons have been given as to why that might have to be done. For my part, I would have been very much more concerned as to where this reform was leading us if there had not been the provision in new Clause A1 of the 1996 Act which is set out in Clause 8(1) of the Bill. This is a clause which would allow a court to take a different rate of return into account, including a lower return, if any party shows that it would be more appropriate in the case in question.

I have in mind—and I have never forgotten it—a case I once had to deal with where a highly talented young woman had been rendered tetraplegic as a result of a road accident which was certainly not her fault. The injury was so severe that she was almost totally paralysed. She could not move any part of her body below the neck. She could breathe but she could not speak. She could communicate only by sucking and blowing through a tube to spell out words on a screen in front of her. For her, the award was assessed on the assumption that it would be necessary to provide and pay for 24-hour care and attention every day, and for the accommodation and equipment she needed to sustain any kind of reasonable comfort, for the rest of her lifetime.

It would seem quite wrong for someone in her condition to be required to expose the award to risks to any degree just because, without that, her award may bear more heavily on the defendants and their insurers—and perhaps through that, on the general public. So I not only welcome the new clause as a safeguard against the risk of unfairness in these extreme cases; without it, the Bill would risk, in the more extreme cases, giving rise to an injustice which ought never to be contemplated.

16:15

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as detailed in the register, in particular as a partner in the international, commercial law firm DAC Beachcroft and as chairman of the British Insurance Brokers’ Association. It is also my great privilege to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead. Fascinated as I was to hear his explanation of what lay behind that decision in Wells v Wells—of course I shall respond in much greater detail in due course in Committee—certainly the world has moved on a long way since that original decision.

I hope that the reforms in the Bill are in no sense controversial. They skilfully and fairly balance competing interests. That is never an easy task for government but it is an essential one, and I commend the Minister on his courage and resolution.

Reference has already been made to the many representations we are receiving, and we shall inevitably hear a great deal of noise from all those vested interests on both sides. But we are not here in this House to serve vested interests. It is the public interest we must serve, and it feels as if Ministers have got the balance broadly right. This has not happened by accident, especially on the law relating to the discount rate.

The reform proposals in Part 2 address an increasingly urgent need. As noble Lords have already understood from previous speeches, the lower the discount rate, the higher the cost. England and Wales are now the sole territories in the developed world with a negative discount rate for all future loss claims. For many younger and elderly drivers alike, the consequences have already proved to be extremely costly. That has thrown out any balance of fairness. We must also, as several speakers have mentioned, be aware of the heavy burden the negative discount rate has been imposing on the National Health Service.

Competition law prevents insurers offering any collective undertaking that premiums will fall if and when the discount rate is restored to a sensible level. However, there has still been an unprecedented commitment from individual chief executives across the market that savings would indeed be passed on. I cannot think of another occasion on which industry leaders have come together to make such a public pledge. They are of course responding to a strong lead from the Government, as the Minister made clear.

The Government published Command Paper 9500, The Personal Injury Discount Rate: How It Should Be Set in Future, on 7 September of last year. The Secretary of State then wisely asked the Justice Select Committee in another place to undertake pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft clause included in the report, which would change the basis on which the discount rate is calculated. That committee, on which no party has a majority, came to a consensus, in favour of reform, with certain caveats. In particular, the committee supported the establishment of an independent expert panel—not a representative panel—to advise the Lord Chancellor on the discount rate, and any discussion on the discount rate necessarily involves making reasonable assumptions about the likely appetite for risk on the part of anyone looking to invest a sum—particularly a substantial sum—of money.

As the committee and the Government have both acknowledged, setting the discount rate can never be a precise science, but I strongly support the notion that it should have a real-world basis, which is currently rather lacking. The Government are rightly committed to retaining the principle of full compensation, which, as we have just heard from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, is so important, particularly in very serious cases.

We must not forget that this means compensation must be neither too little nor too much. In Paragraph 77 of their response to the Select Committee, I was heartened to see the Government state that they,

“will work to ensure that the panel is ready to start work at the earliest opportunity”.

That is a clear undertaking. Given the very considerable measure of consensus around this legislation, I ask my noble and learned friend the Minister to confirm that arrangements for the establishment of this expert panel can and will begin well before the legislation eventually receives Royal Assent.

I would like to mention Part 1 of the Bill. The discount rate provisions are of vital importance, but the plans for whiplash reform too should be commended as being sensible and uncontroversial. For far too long, we have as a country sustained a system in which there is an unseemly squabble over the value of soft tissue injury claims. That has been far more to the benefit of those paid to do the squabbling than it has been for their clients, the victims. What matters most to their clients is prompt and fair redress, not a mathematically precise assessment of their loss. The idea of creating a fixed tariff for such claims, while novel in common law terms, is the right way forward. It takes the mystery out of how such claims are valued and avoids the use of precious court time in arguing over valuations. It can and must create a smoother process for the claimant, who will rightly be placed at the centre of such a process.

I have been a practising lawyer for exactly 50 years next month—I started life as a claimant lawyer, acting in cases for thalidomide victims. I have to say that claimant lawyers and others with a stake in maintaining the status quo are heavily pressurising me to argue that this is unfair and ill thought through. I believe that the Government have taken account of any legitimate concerns. They have wisely dropped the notion that some claims should receive nothing at all. The sums proposed for the tariff, while low, are more in line with what society can realistically afford to pay for these claims. Let us not forget, it is the wider public who have to fund these claims through higher insurance premiums and the inflated cost of goods delivery.

There are consumers and citizens at both ends of this equation. It is the task of Government to balance the interests of everyone involved. In another place, as we have heard, debate continues today on the Financial Guidance and Claims Bill, particularly on how we will contain the excesses of the claims management industry. How many times have we said that in this place? But at last it seems that something is being done. There is a simple answer to the question: it is to contain the amount of money from which they and their hangers-on can take a cut. By their very nature, civil claims set group against group, citizen against citizen.

A decade or more ago, I had the privilege of talking to a very senior senator in Washington, who told me that a complicated and unpredictable system of redress ultimately undermines civility in society. I believe that it does, and I hope that these reforms will go some considerable way towards simplifying redress and restoring the balance of fairness in society. However, I also hope that, in what I think is increasingly an uncivil age, they will serve to restore civility and a healthy respectful relationship between the people in England and Wales.

16:35

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. As I have reminded the House before, we once sat on the same committee, which was modestly called young Atlantic political leaders—where are they now?

It is very difficult to know where to insert oneself in a debate such as this with so many expert contributors, so let me begin at the beginning. During my childhood, I had two quite serious but non-permanent injuries that could probably be pinned on the school and the building I was in when they happened. Looking back, I know that it would never have occurred to my parents to sue somebody because of these misfortunes. Yet, in preparing for this debate, I decided to Google “injuries at school” to see what would happen. Up came a whole smorgasbord of offers: “Has your child been injured in the nursery?” and “Has your child been injured in the playground?” It seems to me that the tenor of the debate so far almost accepts as a given a change for the worse in our society. I do not know whether the spokesman for the Opposition is about to sue Transport for London for his injury—he is shaking his head, which is good; he is going in the right direction—but people see compensation as being worth the risk.

When I came to this House in the late 1990s, one of my first interventions was made in shock after I had been off and spent the afternoon watching daytime television. I saw advert after advert—not unlike the adverts inviting you to play the National Lottery—saying that if you had had the good fortune to have an injury, there might be some money in it for you. I have heard the statistics that my noble friend Lord Sharkey cited; nevertheless, what has happened has cheapened our concept of justice. Access to justice is right; certainly, when we hear the example given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, of the lady who was severely injured in a motor accident, we understand that of course there must be protection. But we have to have the courage to say that access to justice is not limitless and should not lead to clogging up the courts or to cases that increase costs throughout the system.

One thing that has come up when we have debated this before is personal experience. I suppose I should therefore give one other example. A couple of years ago, my wife had a little bump at a T-junction. When she got home, she told me that she had exchanged numbers with the other driver. I said, “Oh well, if you bumped into him, you bumped into him—I’ll ring him up”. The guy was a taxi driver. I spoke to him; we had a civilised conversation. I said, “Look, get the car checked over. Send me the bill and I will settle it”. We did not hear anything for some weeks, and then we were told that the driver had sustained a whiplash injury. I live in St Albans and it was now being handled by a solicitor in an east Lancashire town and they had provided evidence from a doctor in south Manchester. I immediately said, “This is a scam”.

I wrote to the chairman of our insurance company saying it was a scam and that my wife was willing to give evidence if they wished to challenge this obvious attempt to defraud the company. A few weeks later, we got a letter saying that the company had settled the claim because it was under £5,000 and it was not worth fighting. I wonder how many claims of £5,000 and under are settled in that way. Is it a victimless crime—or one that is passed on to the consumer?

I do not accept that this is so small a problem that it should not be dealt with, and I welcome the Government’s attempt to do so. In 2010 when I came into this place, I went to the Ministry of Justice. Between 2010 and 2013 we tried to bring forward some reforms in this area. In the previous Labour Government, Jack Straw campaigned on this issue and has continued to do so. This is an issue that needs addressing. As my colleague and noble friend Lord Sharkey said, we will tease out some of the things that are being put forward to Committee, because that is what we are here for.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, set the scene for the second part of the Bill. It was one of the most difficult pieces of work that one faced as a Minister. I was greatly helped at the time by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, who succeeded me at the MoJ, and by the noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro. It is horrible to hear a case like the one we were given and then have to bring it down to some mathematical solution to give that person justice, but that has to be done. We have to ask in the Bill whether some of those powers should be given to the Lord Chancellor alone, or if there are other ways. We hear what the Delegated Powers Committee has said about certain of those responsibilities, and it has said that a whiplash injury should be defined. We will probably bring that forward in Committee. The tariff for injury should also be in the Bill.

There will be questions about whether the definition of a minor injury being up to two years is excessive. Is the small claims limit set too high at £5,000? As has been said, how will the Government ensure that the consumer and not the insurance companies benefit from these reforms? Nevertheless, this is timely legislation.

In the past, we have managed to get a degree of cross-party agreement that reform in this area is needed, and I hope that in the great tradition of the Lords, the expertise here will be used to help the Minister carry forward a Bill that is really worth while. What he certainly has, and which I had, is the presence of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, in his regular place behind him. Throughout any difficult and torrid debates in Committee on the Bill, he will come to the help of Ministers who flounder at the Dispatch Box. It is a very reassuring thing to see and, like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, I look forward to hearing the contribution of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, to this debate.

16:35

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord McNally, perhaps I may begin at the beginning. Notwithstanding some rather disobliging remarks from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee referred to at some length by the noble Lords, Lord Beecham and Lord Sharkey, which no doubt we shall discuss in Committee, I welcome the Bill because it has at its heart the objective of achieving the greatest possible fairness. There will be fairness on the one hand to ensure that those who suffer life-changing injuries, often through no fault of their own, are properly compensated in so far as money can ever compensate for life-changing events of that sort. There will also be fairness to the other participants in the insured class who will inevitably have to face commensurately increased insurance costs. They are entitled to reassurance that overcompensation will not take place.

Sadly, as other noble Lords have referred to, there is a darker side to all this as part of a litigious society in the form of making claims on the basis of no or fabricated evidence. The proposals in Part 1 to bring whiplash claims under control therefore seem very worthy of support. In his opening remarks, my noble and learned friend referred to some of these fabricated cases, and perhaps I may pass on to him and to the House the following example. Last Friday, I was in the north of England to attend a board meeting of a company of which I am the chairman. I took a taxi and, as is my wont, I inquired of the temperature of the taxi driver, political and otherwise. We got on to the issue of whiplash injuries. He told me that it was prevalent in this and other towns in the north of England for young men to buy a clapped-out banger of a car or van for around £200 and engineer a crash with a taxi. I asked why they would choose a taxi. The driver said that there were two reasons. First, they know that a taxi will be well insured. If it was not, it would not be licensed by the local authority. Secondly, taxi drivers depend on the good will of the local authority for the renewal of their licences and so are less likely to put up a fight, argue the case and press for compensation. That is my contribution of anecdotal evidence gathered last week in the north of England, and it is why I think the Bill is an important first step towards reining in the compensation culture.

I say that it is a first step because there are other areas which need attention. No doubt noble Lords will have received briefings from the Association of British Travel Agents about burgeoning claims for compensation for illness occurring on holiday. Moreover, one of the most depressing aspects of the reviews I have carried out of the charity sector is the way in which individuals attending a charitable event, such as a proposal to raise funds for some much-needed community project, seem quite ruthless in bringing claims against a charity. Falling over a guy rope for a tent is a very common claim, as if tents do not have guy ropes and you have no responsibility for looking where you are walking. Charities are often run by volunteers who have only limited access to legal advice. Faced with what they consider an unreasonable claim, they can only use the small claims court for personal injury claims up to £1,000. I understand that this is to be raised to £2,000. However, the £1,000 for road traffic accidents is to be raised to £5,000. I hope that my noble and learned friend the Minister will explain at some point why we are moving from £1,000 to £2,000 and £1,000 to £5,000. That would be extremely helpful, particularly for smaller charities that have to deal with these unfortunate incidents.

Turning to Part 2 of the Bill, I have taken an interest for some time in what is familiarly called the Ogden rate, including initiating a debate on the matter last July, to which my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench replied. I support the overall shape of the proposal. I note the experienced comments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, about risk. We may be able to have some existential discussions about the nature of this in Committee.

I want to raise two issues that I hope we can explore. First, reverting to the underlying strategic aim of achieving fairness, it seems that with long-tail insurance cases, the use of lump sum damages can result in only one near certainty: that the award will be unfair to one party or another. Surely we need to do more in such cases to make better use of periodical payment orders. One of the answers to the question raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, on making sure that people were fairly compensated would be to make greater use of PPOs.

I am concerned that injured parties—who may or may not be financially sophisticated—may be seduced by an apparent amazingly large lump sum against which the PPO may seem fairly modest and, in reaching that conclusion, may think that they should accept a lump sum. There is a risk that the injured party may be egged on by investment managers who see a long stream of advisory fees stretching into the future, and by insurance companies who see a chance to put a pink ribbon round the file and close the claim for ever.

My second concern is the proposal for the timing of reviews, a process that—as pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, in his opening remarks—needs to be designed to minimise the possibility of the system being gamed. I share the view that three years is too short a period. Indeed, any fixed-term review period is a very blunt instrument. I would argue that the trigger for a review should not be time-based but result from changes in the available rate of return on our investment. Establishing such a benchmark could be problematic, though changes in the base rate would be a pretty good indicator given that these investments will be low-risk, even under the new regime. Perhaps thought might be given to extending the duties of the expert panel proposed in the Bill to include a power for it to recommend to the Lord Chancellor that the rate ought to be reviewed. I look forward to discussing this matter and others in Committee.

Finally, there is an often expressed concern—indeed, it has been expressed this afternoon—that these proposals to control the costs of claims will result not in reduced premiums for the insured but merely in increased profits for insurance companies. Those of us who have spoken up for a fairer system expect the industry to demonstrate that savings as a result of these measures are being appropriately passed on. To be candid, it will not be good enough for the industry to say something along the lines of, “It’s a very competitive industry so savings are bound to be passed on”. The public are in a cynical mood, as reflected in an article in last Saturday’s Times entitled “Insurers fail to drive down premiums”. The article quotes Mr Matt Oliver from GoCompare as saying:

“Where insurance is concerned, loyalty doesn’t pay. Companies typically use their best deals to attract new customers, so often the only option for existing customers is to go elsewhere”.


If that situation persists, it would be a sad outcome to the Bill, the purpose of which I strongly support.

16:45

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, who, as ever, was authoritative and full of charm. I declare my interests as set out in the register of the House and particularly those in respect of the insurance industry.

I also welcome this Bill, seeking, as it does, to tackle two distinct policy areas that are in need of reform. That reform, I believe, will benefit all in the country. I am looking forward to the passage of the Bill, which I hope will deliver these reforms in an optimal way, achieving the vital balance between the interests of all those concerned. To summarise two very interesting early speeches in the debate, from the noble Lords, Lord Beecham and Lord Sharkey, there is a great benefit to be gained from having certainty here. I do not believe that we in this House could feel that we had done our job unless we knew there was certainty on a number of the things mentioned in both those speeches. I certainly believe certainty will help.

The Explanatory Notes for the Bill point out that the UK generated 780,000 whiplash claims last year, which is one in 83 of our population. That is now down to one in 100. However, even the one in 100 statistic is worrying. In preparing for today, I came across a Daily Telegraph article entitled “UK ‘whiplash capital of Europe’”. The first paragraph says there are,

“one out of every 140 people claiming for a whiplash injury each year”.

That article was published in May 2011, so one in 140 has gone, via one in 83, down to one in 100. I am obviously delighted that it has come down, but one has to feel, as a bit of a cynic about the claims management industry, that at least part of that is probably due to its spending so much of its energy on some of the new and wonderful things, such as the holiday sickness scam. However, the figures are too new, and I would like to probe them. I have no doubt we will come back to those in Committee. The point is that it is a vast number of people.

We should also take a look here at other countries. I have run personal lines underwriting businesses in continental Europe, so I have some experience on the ground of what in other countries the number of whiplash claims should be. It is a heck of a lot less. Sometimes—for instance, in France—that is due to impediments, which I think are unfair, that are put in the way of allowing people to claim for whiplash injuries, but in markets such as Germany the number is remarkably less. I certainly remember going to meetings and spending the day with Munich Re, a major reinsurance company, in Munich, and people pulling my leg about what they call “the British disease”. It is one reason Munich Re was pulling back from reinsuring British motor insurance.

The noble and learned Lord the Minister, in his speech at the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers conference on 17 April said:

“The number of road traffic accident related personal injury claims remains around 70% higher than in 2005/06 and around 85% of these claims are for whiplash related injuries. This is despite extensive improvements in both vehicle safety and a decline in the number of reported accidents in recent years”.


That decline, in the past 10 years, was 31%, according to the Department for Transport statistics. So 31% fewer accidents, in safer vehicles, are producing 70% more whiplash claims.

All this whiplash-claims activity produces loss cost to the insurance industry. We in the industry of course reprice our products annually, so that cost is therefore charged on as a problem to you and to me. The removal of non-bona fide whiplash claims is estimated in the impact assessment to be worth £1.1 billion a year. The ABI has probed how much of that goes into the pockets of those who have had the whiplash, or allegedly so, and how much goes into the pockets of claims management companies and specialist solicitors firms. The answer is that about 50% goes into the pockets of those assisting the whiplashed people.

Our task, then, is complicated. We are aiming for a £35 a year reduction in annual premiums. We will need to come back to this in Committee, as I do not understand what the promise really is from the insurance industry in respect of the £35 that could be there for the saving. I am sorry to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, but the industry is incredibly competitive, so I cannot believe that at least some of that will not naturally come back through competitive pressures. It is also true that people have been making these promises to their regulator, the FCA, which—I speak again with experience—is one of the toughest regulators in the world. It would certainly be pretty displeased with someone who had breached a promise to the general public and was not treating customers fairly. The fines for not treating customers fairly are very large. There is a certain amount of carrot and stick there.

On the personal injury discount rate, we have much to thank the House of Lords judges for in the case of Wells v Wells. They laid out the law with great clarity, a clarity that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, exhibited earlier in his seminal contribution. As ever, I learnt a lot; the noble and learned Lord never gets up without me learning. In March last year, the discount rate was lowered from 2.5% to minus 0.75%.

Oddly, this is the second time this year that we have spoken in this Chamber about discount rates, the other occasion being the debate on reconstruction and renewal, where we talked about discount rates in respect of the financial modelling, which gave very surprising numbers as to how expensive it would be to repair the Palace in some of the options being considered. That discount rate came from the Treasury Green Book and was 3%. I noted in that debate how sensitive things were and have looked for a precise example.

In the educational section of the Chartered Insurance Institute website, there is a worked example which is very instructive. It notes that when the discount rate was 2.5% the lump-sum settlement for a 20 year-old man who requires £100,000 of care per year for his lifetime was £3.2 million. When the discount rate changed to minus 0.75%, that £3.2 million rose to £8.9 million, almost three times the amount. That demonstrates just how sensitive it is.

That is why, in its latest annual report, NHS Resolution moved its reserves for past losses up by £4.7 billion and stated that it expected £1.2 billion to be added annually to the budgeted cost going forward for clinical negligence. All that is money coming out of the front line of the health service. This year’s budget for clinical negligence excluding the PIDR change is £1.95 billion, so the extra due to the change represents an increase of more than 60% in the cost for clinical negligence to the NHS.

The insurance industry, naturally, has had to increase its reserves. Noble Lords will have read all about the one-off pain of that, but the industry has the opportunity to reprice, so for classes of insurance such as employer liability and public liability the industry is now repriced and whole again.

Had Wells v Wells been heard in 2018, instead of 1998, a lot of argument would have been presented concerning the lessons learnt in the aftermath of the financial crash and, in particular, the effect that quantitative easing has had on the gilts markets. According to the Bank of England website, the Bank has bought £435 billion-worth of gilts and £10 billion-worth of corporate bonds. To put that number in context numerically, that is about 25% of today’s gilt outstandings. Quantitative easing was unheard of in 1998, and it has certainly had an effect on the very part of the investment market that Wells v Wells is tied to; indeed, that effect has been to depress the PIDR to its current level of minus 0.75%.

I accept that, mechanically, this number is what Wells demands but, like many noble Lords, I feel that it is completely wrong. I could say a lot about that at a high level, but it implies that investors will pay the Government to house their money over the decades ahead. I do not believe that that is credible or the lesson of history. The equivalent of the PIDR in France is 1.2%, in Ireland 1.5%, in Spain 3.5% and in Germany 4%. Britain is an outlier, as other noble Lords have pointed out. Rethinking the PIDR, therefore, is an idea whose time has come.

The Bill makes a good stab at things, but could the Minister give us a bit of colour on what,

“more risk than a very low level of risk”,

means? Indeed, I worry, as others do, that the whole of paragraph 3(3)(d) of new Schedule A1 on page 9 of the Bill is none too legally certain. Also, what timeframe does the Minister have in mind for when the expert panel will have reviewed the PIDR and the level either affirmed or changed? I am thinking, in particular, of the £1.2 billion clock that is ticking for the NHS.

I make one short final point concerning Scotland and Northern Ireland. Section 6 of the Bill refers to the role of the FCA, yet it applies only to England and Wales. I am concerned that this could create problems for the UK market and present a potential for the ever-creative claims management companies to arbitrage regulation between the different parts of the UK. The interests of the UK in this regard would be best served by having a single market and regulator. Is the Minister in touch with the devolved Administrations to ask whether they would be willing to make use of this primary legislation to improve the situation generally? I close by welcoming this Bill.

16:57

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, this is an extremely interesting Bill for me, for reasons that I will explain in a moment.

I will not say much about the first part of the Bill and the types of injury it deals with. That is because long ago, when I was in practice in Scotland, the system was still that juries awarded damages in personal injuries cases. I acted for the defendant in a case of whiplash injury. The lady came to the jury to explain how bad her injuries were. We had put in an advance offer—as was usual—for what we understood, from the medical evidence, was a reasonable estimate of the worth of the injuries. At the jury trial the lady was very good at explaining how bad the whole thing was, and she got an award considerably above our offer. My reputation as an estimator was, therefore, adversely affected by that experience.

I had the great advantage, however, that the late Lord Fraser of Tullybelton—as he became—was the presiding judge. In those days the judge was not supposed to give much indication: it was a matter for the jury and he was not supposed to intervene to say it should be this or that. Lord Fraser—as those who knew him will remember—was an excellent judge who observed that requirement meticulously. He came to me afterwards and said that he thought I had been very badly treated by the jury, which shows how difficult it is to estimate genuinely on this type of injury. I have no doubt that there may be some question about precisely what the rate should be when the whole thing is lumped together as if it were a reasonably common experience, with reasonably common results.

However, I want to speak primarily about Part 2 of the Bill, because I am in the remarkable position of seeing that this part would amend a Bill that I introduced, and which became an Act, in 1996. My recollection of that—it is over 20 years ago, as your Lordships will quickly be able to observe—was that the judges were having a lot of difficulty in assessing damages, particularly for the whole of life, as some cases required. They were of course experiencing the benefit of actuaries and other people who ran investments, and so on. This involved a very large amount of work in the individual cases and the judiciary were anxious—I am subject to correction by members of the judiciary who may remember this situation—to avoid the necessity for this repeated excursion into financial administration. The other thing is that at that time, in 1996, the markets were probably a bit less volatile than they are now.

Eventually we passed that Bill, which required the Lord Chancellor to fix the discount rate. Fortunately, I had managed to retire before I had to do it so it fell to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, to fix it, which I am sure he did to the best of his ability. He had to take the advice of the Government Actuary but he was not confined to that. He fixed the rate and that rate has lasted until 2017. The great thing about that matter is that if it changes after such a lapse of time, it is going to be quite a change and the effect on the estimates within various bodies, particularly public bodies such as the National Health Service, is terrific. I entirely agree that something more regular is required and that it is a difficult task, because the effects of the kind of injuries that may come before the court can vary tremendously, from those which will last for a lifetime to those which are much shorter.

I want to look at the assumptions that the Lord Chancellor is required to make under the Bill and I venture to suggest that they form a bit of a challenge. The Bill says in Part 2:

“The Lord Chancellor must make the rate determination on the basis that the rate of return should be the rate that, in the opinion of the Lord Chancellor, a recipient of relevant damages could reasonably be expected to achieve if the recipient invested the relevant damages for the purpose of securing that—


(a) the relevant damages would meet the losses and costs for which they are awarded”.


That is fairly easy to say on a day-to-day basis. But Part 2 then says that,

“the relevant damages would meet those losses and costs at the time or times when they fall to be met by the relevant damages”.

These will be years ahead in some cases, so it is quite an assumption that the Lord Chancellor has to make. The last provision is really crucial. It says that,

“the relevant damages would be exhausted at the end of the period for which they are awarded”.

When I chaired the Select Committee that looked into the Assisted Dying Bill, one thing we learned was that doctors had great difficulty in assessing the length of life. One of the great difficulties is to assess when the damages should be finished, because in the life cases, which are now a very substantial part of the damages that have to be paid by the National Health Service, life expectancy is very difficult to estimate. Even as you get near the end of life, life expectancy seems to be very difficult to estimate. When a baby is born and the results affect that baby for the rest of its life, you can imagine the difficulty of trying to determine that.

The Lord Chancellor has to go on, having made these assumptions, to assume,

“that the relevant damages are payable in a lump sum”.

He is not allowed to take account of the fact that you can now pay in instalments. The second assumption is,

“that the recipient of the relevant damages is properly advised on the investment of the relevant damages”.

That seems a fairly easy assumption to make. It is not so easy to know what the right advice would be. The third assumption is,

“that the recipient of the relevant damages invests the relevant damages in a diversified portfolio of investments”.

You would think that might be covered in proposed new subsection 3(b), but for clarity it has been separated out. Proposed new subsection 3(d) is the one I want particularly to draw attention to because we may want to look at it in some detail in Committee. It says:

“The assumption that the relevant damages are invested using an approach that involves … more risk than a very low level of risk, but … less risk than would ordinarily be accepted by a prudent and properly advised individual investor who has different financial aims”.


I assume these are different aims from the people who are investing the damages award for the injured party.

The assumptions that have to be made by the Lord Chancellor on this basis all seem very reasonable, but I think it would require the Lord Chancellor to have a certain element of the prophet about him or her to enable these assumptions to be taken with any degree of accuracy—we really need to look at this. I imagine that the promoters of this Bill have looked at this very carefully and if it is going to be accurate from the point of view of awarding damages, these conditions have to be fulfilled. The difficulty about it is how you satisfy yourself that that will be true. That is what I would like to hear a little about.

The expert panel included an actuary, but my understanding of actuarial science—it is a limited understanding—is that it is very much based on the statistical evidence on length of life. The trouble is that each case is separate; it is not the average, it is an individual case. How do actuaries go about doing this? I am interested to know. The Government Actuary has to do all that kind of thing and does it extremely well, but it is not by any means easy. Getting an expert panel to agree—it includes an actuary and investment people—will be very difficult.

The Bill deals with making fair the system of awards in civil liability. Two distinct aspects are covered in the Bill—the particular kind of injuries are dealt with in the first part and the discount rate in the second part, but the system is bigger than that. One of the important elements in the present system is an Act of 1948 in which Section 4(2)—I am sorry, Section 2(4); I had better get them in the right order—indicates that the damages are to be calculated on the basis that the medical attention is given on a private basis. I can see that in 1948, when the health service was very young, that might be appropriate, but I think modern times have crept up on that and it is rather doubtful whether that is a good basis.

There is another point in relation to that. One of the biggest areas of claim for the National Health Service is in obstetrics. The trouble with an obstetric injury is that it is likely to have effect for the rest of the person’s life and, as I say, you have to forecast what that is. My understanding is that the amount of private practice in obstetrics has almost disappeared for the reason that the premium for an operator in obstetrics is so large as not to be worth while; he is better to be in the National Health Service. I am not sure about that but it is what I understand to be the case. If so, it strengthens very much the need for a revision of a rule that requires you to assume what is not there as a basis for damages. Assessing damages is difficult enough without trying to assume what now is no longer practised.

17:10

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by declaring an interest as a member of the board of Thompsons Solicitors, the largest trade-union-oriented firm of solicitors and a big firm in the personal injury world. I serve on the board with my noble friend Lady Primarolo, who is sat behind me.

We are concerned with the victims but also with abuse of the system. No one on our side supports abuse, and we have heard some examples of that. No one doubts that there is quite a lot of it, but nor should anyone doubt where the primary blame for some of this lies. The key to the answer to that question is in the example given by the noble Lord, Lord McNally: the insurance companies have been extremely weak. If you can concoct a claim, you get £5,000 or maybe something near it. That did not just go around one northern town; it spread like wildfire. I believe that the insurance industry bears a lot of the responsibility for the situation we are in today. Add to that the claims management industry, which has been fostered by the opportunities that have been provided, and it seems to me that as lawmakers we should be looking very much at their activities as well as remedying any abuses that are around. My worry about the Bill, particularly with the increases in the cost limits and so on, is that the blame is being put on the victims and they are the people who will lose out. I will develop that thought in a moment.

The Bill is intended to reduce motor insurance claims first and foremost and, more generally, to reduce the number of claims for personal injury at work. The increase in the small claims limit is being introduced as a package with the Bill, and of course it can be done by statutory instrument. As has been mentioned, the current small claims limit for all personal injury claims is £1,000. It is proposed to double that amount, which is well above the levels recommended by Lord Jackson as recently as 2013. Others here who know more about this subject than I do will recall that Lord Jackson was proposing that when his package was introduced in 2013, the small claims limit should be increased only when inflation had taken it up to £1,500, and thereafter in blocks of £500. He did not contemplate a doubling for personal injury cases.

A justification for the hike is that the £1,000 figure requires revision because it has not been increased since the 1990s and an inflationary rise is therefore necessary. However, an increase of sorts was made in 1999, when the limit was restricted to general damages. That was the year Lord Jackson took as the base year for his recommendations. One of the unions that has submitted information to the House, the retail union USDAW, has calculated that if the CPI had been applied from 1999 to the present day, the limit should be increased to £1,440 and on current CPI rates would reach £2,000 only some time at the start of the 2030s.

The effect of this increase on non-road traffic personal injury cases—an area where the abuse is a lot less than in road traffic claims—will be profound. At present, very few are dealt with in the small claims court, but under the proposed new regime many more would fall into that court, where legal costs are not recoverable. As a result, a lot of claimants would be unrepresented or would have to find their own resources. For union members that is probably fine, as the union would cope with that; for a sound case, that is what we do; it is a core job that we have. But the many others not in a union will be made much more vulnerable. The result is deprivation of legal representation in recovering damages for injuries and losses. The number of workplace PI cases is reducing annually, and USDAW, from its own experience, calculates that the number of cases captured by the proposed lift in the small claims limit would increase fivefold. As I say, if people are in a union, that is not such a problem, but for others, it is a big problem.

As we have heard, extra costs will accrue to the Government as well. The impact assessment acknowledges that the changes will cost the NHS £6 million, and public funds generally £140 million each year. The impact assessment goes on to confirm a benefit of an extra £1.3 billion to the insurance industry. The Government are hoping that 85% of this windfall will be passed on to the consumer in reduced premiums. I note the guarantee that the chief executives have given, so let us hope that that bears out and they live up to their promises. But they will have to forgive me for being a bit sceptical. The Association of British Insurers has admitted that the insurance industry saved more than £8 billion over five years a result of earlier government changes, yet there is no sign that insurance premiums have declined at all. Indeed, they have continued to rise. Other factors tend to crowd in on these kind of promises, and they must be held to account in keeping this guarantee. I hope the Government will confirm that they will do that.

A further worry is that the decreasing presence of lawyers will leave a vacuum into which could sweep unregulated case management companies. They are always on the lookout to increase their business, and some of them are prepared to use highly questionable methods to persuade vulnerable people that a “lottery win” is within their reach if they just listen and leave it to them.

A word on the road traffic cases. The Government’s justification for raising the small claims limit to £5,000 is that there is an epidemic of fraudulent claims. Yet that evidence should not just be taken at face value or anecdotally borne out by stories that we all tend to tell. The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers has made it clear that it believes that the figures the Government are relying on are exaggerated. The figures for actual proven fraud are rather low. All this shows that there is perhaps a need to spend a little more time checking each other’s figures because, on the current proposals, perhaps as many as 96% of all road traffic claims will be captured by the increase to £5,000.

It is therefore undeniable that hundreds of thousands of genuinely injured people could risk losing the basis for their claims being proceeded with effectively with legal representation. It should always be remembered when the House considers such things that legal claims are the primary driver for retaining and improving health and safety standards in the workplace, and that the massive reduction in the number of claims that is likely to be occasioned by these changes will have an adverse effect on health and safety standards. Deregulation in this area increases the risk of injury at work, and the Bill simultaneously would restrict the ability to seek redress. I hope we will have some substantive debate and see substantial changes to this Bill in Committee, and I look forward to getting into the detail to see whether we can make it better.

17:20

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to go down memory lane to the nine years I spent as a personal injury and licensing barrister at Kings Chambers in Manchester. During my time as a junior barrister, dealing with road traffic accidents seemed to be compulsory basic training, rather akin to the traffic list in a magistrates’ court for the criminal Bar of this era. I should state that I was a member of the PIBA, and I am grateful for its briefing, as well as the advice of the now head of the personal injury department at my old chambers, who happens to be my former pupil mistress, Fiona Ashworth.

As is the nature of the independent Bar, I represented both claimants and defendants, the latter being legally represented through insurance companies as a result of the statutory obligation for drivers to have third party, fire and theft insurance. It is important to note at the outset that it is claimants who are legally unrepresented, unless they have fully comprehensive insurance or free-standing legal expenses insurance. Of course, a claimant may be a passenger, who is obviously under no duty to be insured. This statutory obligation of third party, fire and theft created a huge market of customers for insurance companies, and the quid pro quo of creating this market at that time was the Motor Insurers’ Bureau, which the insurance companies paid for to deal with claims when the defendant driver was uninsured. Underlying all of this is the foundational principle that if you drive your car deliberately or negligently so that you damage someone else, in terms of their property or personal injury, you must compensate them. How sad it is that the term “compensation culture” has come to be seen only as derogatory. It is an important plank of any mature justice system. I must state at the outset that I agree with the tenor of the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Monks, and I ask my noble and learned friend the Minister to comment. In my experience, the overwhelming majority of claimants are genuine.

The mischief that the Bill seeks to address seems twofold regarding whiplash claims, and it is to Part 1 that I will limit my comments. Her Majesty’s Government have two laudable desires: to reduce insurance premiums and to reduce exaggerated and fraudulent claims. While I believe, along with other noble Lords, that the obligation to obtain a medical report will serve the useful purpose of ensuring that claims are dealt with thoroughly and will help to reduce the possibility of fraudulent claims, I currently have reservations about the introduction of the Lord Chancellor as the creator of a new tariff, the separation out in the personal injury system of compensation of one discrete form of claim, and the proposed levels of the new tariff. I also mention the oddity of the codification of the duty to mitigate.

First, I will address the separation out of one type of claim. I spent more hours than I care to remember poring over what was then the Judicial Studies Board guidelines to assess the value of someone’s personal injury claim. After a while, it was described to me that you get a feel for cases, but it is important to remember that the guidelines do not seek to compare apples and pears. There is no mystery to the assessment. These guidelines are based on reasons and analysis as to why certain injuries merit more compensation. Importantly, they enable claimants—perhaps chatting about their injuries in, say, the office or the pub—to have confidence that they can compare, for instance, why a visible scar is worth more than one that is not visible; or why, in general, a fracture will merit more compensation than a soft-tissue injury.

The guidelines hold together as a body of reasoned assessment, and it these guidelines that the Bill seeks to substantially change. It is important to remember, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge—who is not in his place—stated in Simmons v Castle, that the Court of Appeal has the power and a duty to review the guidelines. I would be grateful for confirmation from the Minister of whether the insurance companies maintain that these tariffs are too high for this type of injury, have raised these arguments in the courts and have been unable to persuade them.

I note that my noble friend used the word “proportionate”, which is a legal term that could be subject to test in our courts, to challenge these guidelines. Is it that the courts have said that the guidelines are a matter for Parliament to legislate on—to take one section of injuries out of the guidelines as they decided they were unable to do so? Is that also why we have the Bill? Also, am I correct in my reading of the Bill that a whiplash injury to a cyclist, motorcyclist or pedestrian falls outside the tariff? Does a whiplash injury fall outside the Bill if you fall over in the street or are a passenger on a train that stops suddenly? Even a motor vehicle accident on a private road might be treated differently. These would then be assessed on the Judicial College guidelines, not the Lord Chancellor’s fixed tariff. This matters enormously as the amounts of compensation that Her Majesty’s Government are proposing in the tariff, in the consultation and the impact assessment, are so much lower than the Judicial College guidelines. How can this be just to a claimant?

I had the privilege, mainly due to court listing procedures on the northern circuit, to sit in waiting rooms for hours talking to genuine claimants. So often, the few thousand pounds of compensation for pain, suffering and loss of amenity was going to have a substantial effect on their finances, enabling them to buy a car, pay off a debt or pay for education, as well as make windfall purchases such as holidays. Why does a car passenger not deserve the same whiplash compensation as a cyclist for the same injury? I could perhaps understand this part of the Bill more if the savings to the insurance companies of reducing motor car whiplash claims had to be passed on through insurance premiums. A mere pledge is just not good enough. Why do Her Majesty’s Government think that genuine claimants should not get this compensation and that the insurance company should have the money instead? As the Personal Injury Bar Association briefing states:

“Further, if a claimant is going to be fraudulent or exaggerate a claim, there will be a large incentive to describe symptoms lasting for longer than the tariff provides so as to bring their claim out of the tariff and more than double the amount of compensation they receive. The greater the disconnect between the tariff amounts and the judicial college guidelines and court awards, the greater the incentive to exaggerate the duration of symptoms. Such an approach would undermine the stated goal of the Bill”.


Of course, if the tariff is to be the same as the Judicial College guidelines, the statute is superfluous.

Surely such irrational differences between the tariff and the Judicial College guidelines will somehow be justiciable. Maybe someone will now say that the European charter, on which I so happily voted with the Government yesterday, might be the solution. I am not in principle against a tariff system: we currently have one called the Judicial College guidelines and we also have one for the criminal injuries compensation scheme, but the tariff has to apply to all cases so that people can readily understand the fairness of their compensation. Also, why does the government tariff say that a 10-month injury and a 12-month injury merit exactly the same amount of compensation? There is not even a bracket of figures in the examples of the tariff I have seen. How can this be just?

There are other, more complicated, cases that we also need to consider. While the overwhelming majority of soft-tissue injuries caused to the neck, shoulder and back by the forces of deceleration on impact recover within six to 12 months, a small minority of claims—perhaps around 5%— leave permanent damage. Long-term effects can range from ongoing twinges, to accelerating the onset of arthritis, to the more complicated but well-recognised fibromyalgia and chronic pain syndromes. The latter will command substantial levels of compensation. Although these will, of course, fall outside the new tariff outlined in the Bill, it is important to realise that pressure may be put on unrepresented claimants to settle their claim too early, relying on only a basic GP’s medical report. Such a report does not even require a GP to have seen previous medical records. People will often need advice to wait and see. I sent back so many claims, saying, “Don’t settle now. Wait.”. However, we all know of the type of pressurising phone calls that can be made. Are Her Majesty’s Government going to make the quid pro quo of these savings to insurance companies that those companies must provide legal advice to an unrepresented claimant? How else will there be equality of arms?

In relation to the Lord Chancellor as the creator of the tariff, I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify whether the Lord Chancellor will have to consult the Lord Chief Justice on Clause 2(2), or even have to consider the Judicial College guidelines when deciding on this tariff. It is hard to imagine that the tariff, if at the levels outlined in government consultation, will not impact on other forms of compensation. Is it the Government’s intention to bring down compensation on a whole range of injuries by the use of this statute? Will not insurance companies be able to raise non-tariff injuries and use this legislation to say the Judicial College guidelines are too high overall, trying for a revision of the whole system?

I turn briefly to the duty to mitigate, outlined in Clause 2(1)(b)(ii). It refers to,

“the claimant's failure to take reasonable steps to mitigate its effect”,

thereby bringing their case in the two-year period. It seems this might encourage defendants routinely to argue that earlier treatment would have led to lesser injuries so they would be in the tariff, and that is a difficult argument for litigants in person to meet and argue against. I would be grateful to know why the Government are putting the common law duty to mitigate on a statutory footing only in this area and inserting a section that will lead to an increase in the complication of litigation, which I was pleased to see in its briefing that the PIBA did not want to encourage.

In conclusion, the Minister said that three-quarters of the insurance companies have signed up to a pledge. I am surprised that it is not more. Why are we relying on only three-quarters? Will there be a strategy to ensure that the entire industry signs up to pass on these savings? In relation to the abuse correctly outlined by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope—I practise in this area—yes, there is an abuse, but the intended, not unintended, consequence of the Bill is to have a significant effect on genuine claimants. Is that a fair balance to strike? There will be an effect on genuine claimants: they will not benefit from the Bill. I fear we are hearing too loudly from the lawyers and the insurers, and I have yet to see any representation purely on behalf of genuine claimants from an organisation with no other vested interests. I hope the Minister will be open to listening and meeting to deal with the concerns that I have outlined.

17:32

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I will address only Part 1 of the Bill, following on from the very eloquent remarks of the noble Baroness.

It seems to me that there are four problems that will have to be addressed, and I will briefly mention them and suggest some solutions. The first is the need for advice and who is to pay for it. This is a problem that runs right across the whole of the legal sector at the moment, and gets more difficult by the day. We need to deal with small claims— small areas where advice is needed—in a proportionate manner, but one that does not incentivise people to bring litigation for the sake of litigation.

Secondly, it cannot be right to categorise a claim as for the fast track or a small claim, simply to enable fees to be recovered. Those are different points: the point of a track is the difficulty of the case.

Thirdly, I welcome the principle of a tariff; this is a novel departure. We ought to look at this and I very much take the point made by the noble Baroness about why we are doing it in this one sphere, which could be met with the remark, “Well, you should pilot it”. There is much to be said for setting a simple tariff, for two reasons: one, it gives certainty and two, it enables claims to be settled more easily. I shall return in a moment to the way in which that should be set.

Fourthly, there is the problem of fraud. In my own experience, the insurance industry—not merely in large claims but in small ones—crusades or works very hard to suppress fraud. In the instance mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, what are commonly known as “cash for crash” cases, the insurance industry has instigated significant prosecutions and has made use of the contempt of court rules to seek the imprisonment of those who have brought false claims. It would be helpful to know what the issues and difficulties are, and the proportion of cases where the insurance industry feels there is a fraudulent claim but cannot prove it. It is important when setting the tariff to have some clear idea of why and how you are setting it. Are you setting it to stop fraud, or on the basis that people should be more stoic and should not be paid so much for a bit of pain? What is the basis?

I will return to each of those four points. First, on the provision of advice, it seems that we need to look at this issue more broadly and not separate out those who suffer this type of personal injury. It is wrong that the energies of claims managers and the legal profession should go into this kind of claim and not the much more important types of small claim. If resources are to be used, they should be used for the vindication of serious rights. It is, I think, the experience of everyone that many people have rights they cannot vindicate because they cannot get legal advice. I hope that the Government give serious consideration to funding the Courts & Tribunals Service or some other body to provide proper online advice in this area, in which a great deal can now be done. Last year, City university and others sponsored a hackathon where people tried to create this kind of legal advice online. I hope that efforts will be made to pursue that.

Secondly, on the allocation of tracks, whether a small claim or fast-track claim, it is essential that the courts have the right IT. If they are to have litigants in person, the IT must be designed to deal with those.

Thirdly, on setting the tariff, I listened with great interest to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, explain the task the Lord Chancellor would have in setting the discount rate. The task of setting the tariff rate, although dealing with much smaller sums, poses some difficulties. He is given no committee—although a committee is provided for in the other part of the Bill—and no guidance as to what he is to take into account. It would be helpful to look in Committee at assistance that could be given to the Lord Chancellor. Certainly, as has been suggested, maybe the judges could give advice, or the Lord Chief Justice could appoint people who can give advice. It is wholly wrong in principle that this should be set by a government Minister without proper legal advice and medical advice, because no doubt over the next few years, medical science will improve so that we have a much clearer idea of how you prove or show that such injuries have been sustained.

Finally, we must address a fundamental problem: what is this compensation level to be set at? Is it to be set to deter fraud, or is it a matter of compensation? If it is the latter, and assuming that an ordinary individual needs advice, who is to pay for the advice? Is that part of the compensation or not? That point must be addressed. You cannot say we are offering fair compensation unless you are clear about the various objectives. I warmly support this Part of the Bill—as I do the other Parts, on which I could not better the comments already made. It has the right principles, but a great deal needs to be done to improve it.

17:40

[Lord Faulks (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by declaring some interests. I am a practising barrister, and Part 2 of the Bill, relating to the personal injury discount rate, is relevant to the size of the awards in cases in which I am instructed by both defendants and claimants. In particular, I declare an interest as acting for the National Health Service and for various medical defence unions in claims of the utmost severity. I should also declare an interest as having being a Minister in the Ministry of Justice between 2013 and 2016, immediately following the noble Lord, Lord McNally, from whom we have heard. During that time, whiplash reform was frequently discussed. However, during my time in the Ministry of Justice, neither Lord Chancellor changed the discount rate.

The Bill, or something like it, has been a long time coming. Noble Lords may remember that in the Queen’s Speech a Bill was foreshadowed which would,

“ensure there is a fair, transparent and proportionate system of compensation in place for damages paid to genuinely injured personal injury claimants”.

The scope of this Bill, which is,

“to make provision about whiplash claims and the personal injury discount rate”,

is much narrower, although I anticipate that the aim of the legislation very much reflects what was said in the Queen’s speech. I hope that, at the very least, we will be able to debate the future of Section 2(4) of the Law Reform (Personal Injuries) Act 1948, as referred to by my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay and the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey.

I imagine that most noble Lords will agree that many whiplash claims have contained a strong element of a racket. There may well be a dispute as to how much of a racket, but very few of us will have escaped invitations to commit a fraud, usually on the telephone, inviting us to say that we have been involved in an accident. There is also the sort of fraud suggested to the noble Lord, Lord McNally. There is such an accumulation of anecdote that it becomes beyond anecdotal evidence. I regularly used to receive telephone calls when I was a Minister, inviting me to participate in these frauds. When I identified myself and invited further information to be provided to me, the phone suddenly went silent.

The difficulty, or perhaps the advantage, to some people with whiplash is that it is neither provable nor disprovable by any scans or investigations, and so provides an opportunity for those who wish to participate in a fraud, or simply wish to exaggerate the impact of a particular accident on their neck or back. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Monks, that insurers have played their part in what has been this racket. The inclusion of pre-medical offers precluding settlement is definitely a step in the right direction and it is important that it should remain in the Bill.

Part 1 reflects a strategy to restrict the level of damages and to discourage these ambitious, or fraudulent claims. It has been criticised, and I quote the briefing from the Law Society as “arbitrary, disproportionate and wrong”. It said that the Bill ignores genuine claimants, and even that the evidence of fraud is very slender. It is true that the existence of a tariff will mean smaller claims for pain, suffering and loss of amenity, although when a scheme of this sort was originally announced, not by the Ministry of Justice, but by the Treasury, it was suggested that no damages at all would be paid for pain, suffering and loss of amenity. However, in this scheme, what are known by lawyers as special damages will be recoverable—that is, loss of earnings or medical expenses attributable to the injury. There is a power, subject to the regulations, for an uplift on the tariff for damages in exceptional circumstances. It is said that this will give rise to litigation—that the changes and the proposed increase in the small claims limit will result in a proliferation of litigants in person. I am sure these and other criticisms, which we have already heard canvassed in the course of these debates, will be debated in Committee. My view is that this part of the Bill is aimed in the right direction and is a necessary correction to the whiplash claims racket.

By contrast, I do not think that there should be much real debate about the need to change the discount rate, which was dramatically reduced as a result of a decision of the then Lord Chancellor, Ms Truss, from 2.5% to -0.75%. Even cautious wealth advisers have described this rate as “incredibly generous”, and this is borne out by relevant international comparisons. As we have heard, the Government’s proposal is to change the assumption. The result should still be a generous discount rate from the point of view of claimants and should result in fair compensation to them. The Government could in fact have gone further in relation to the assumptions, but have been rather conservative—with a small “c”.

I do, however, have a number of issues with this part of the Bill. The first is that it could be some time before it takes effect. The cost to the taxpayer of a change in the discount rate is very high indeed. The Department of Health is a particular loser. The suggestion is that the recent changes may result in a loss of as much as £1.2 billion a year. Furthermore, the cost of clinical negligence claims generally, as revealed in the recent National Audit Office report, has got completely out of hand. Every day that -0.75% remains the discount rate will be a further blow to government, both national and local, as well as to those affected by increased premiums.

There is a 180-day turnaround period between the Lord Chancellor deciding to commence a review and the expert panel reporting back. But the obligation to commence a review begins only after commencement of the Act, and we do not know when that will be. As I understand the Bill, he or she has 90 days after commencement before the 180-day turnaround period even begins, and perhaps my noble and learned friend will confirm my understanding of this. The commencement date—see Clause 11 in Part 3—is on such a day as the Secretary of State may appoint, and so the period does not begin automatically once the Bill is passed. The Lord Chancellor must be ready for these changes. Why can the initial 90-day period in which the Lord Chancellor has to commence a review not be curtailed to, say, 30 days? Surely preparation should be under way for at least some preliminary work on the composition of the panel. I hope my noble and learned friend will be able to reassure the House that the Government intend to get on with this as soon as possible.

My other main concern is the frequency of the review. My experience as a practitioner is that, pending a probable change in the discount rate, parties on both sides, particularly in substantial cases, will inevitably and legitimately seek to game the system. Indeed, I can tell the House that that is going on at this very moment, depending on when trials might take place in relation to anticipating forward changes in the discount rate. If the review is every three years, there will be a constant exercise in guessing whether the discount rate will go up or down. By complete coincidence, the period of five years that was suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and my noble friend Lord Hodgson, is one to which I adhere. I respectfully suggest that it should be five years. What is important is that there should be regular reviews, as opposed to no reviews at all or very infrequent reviews, which, as we have heard, has been the position since the Damages Act came into force.

I am also concerned about the recoverability of investment advice as a separate head of damages. My construction of Clause 3(3) of Schedule A1 inserted by Clause 8 leads me to think that this should not be a separate head of damages as is now the case following the decision of Eagle v Chambers—here I have to declare an interest, as I was involved in that case. Given that the discount rate reflects a degree of advice—or at least proper advice given to a claimant—then surely he or she cannot recover the cost of additional expert advice as once was customary in large cases.

Finally, I want to say something about periodical payments. I entirely endorse what a number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Hodgson, have said about periodical payments. I read the Government’s response to the House of Commons Select Committee in which they said that they would investigate, either directly or with the help of a third party, whether there are any ways in which the present law and practice regarding PPOs could be improved to ensure that any avoidable obstacles to their use are removed. It seems to me that periodical payments are often much more satisfactory than lump sums and are a clear indication that a claimant is not interested in gambling on the uncertainties of the market or indeed his or her life expectancy, but simply wants to make sure that damages are available, as and when needed, for the rest of their lives.

In this context, I will comment briefly on the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, who was one of the judges in the case of Wells v Wells. He spoke of the power that always existed for having varying rates, according to different heads. I agree with my noble friend Lord Hodgson that some of his anxieties would be and are satisfied by the regular awards of periodical payments, particularly cases of cerebral palsy for example, where life expectancy, even in the time of my practice, varied considerably. It is now very much longer than it was, because of improvements in medical science.

I have thought carefully about whether it ultimately should be for the Lord Chancellor to decide these matters or if there should be a panel, taking it out of the political sphere entirely. Indeed, the political pressures on a Lord Chancellor not to do anything are plainly there in the existing legislative framework. Ultimately, it is appropriate that a Lord Chancellor should decide, albeit with the obligation regularly to review on advice, because ultimately it is a political matter. This was one of the difficulties that the Supreme Court faced because, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, said, it did not have all the evidence that one might have to come to its conclusion. The Supreme Court does not have what the Supreme Court in America has, so-called Brandeis briefs, with all the information enabling you to make an almost economic or socioeconomic decision. Politicians make what legal academics call polycentric decisions about the appropriate discount rate or any other factor. That is not something that courts in this country are able to do.

In my view, subject to hearing further argument, the structure of the Bill in this respect is right. We want a fair system of compensation for both sides in litigation, and one that commands public support. The Bill, though capable of improvement, should do this.

17:52

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a daunting task to follow my noble friend, who is such an expert in this field. I intend to raise three non-legal points on the Bill, in the view that it pursues the right course, but there are certain questions that are worth raising.

First, I fall into the category of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, as the insurance industry settles too often, too quickly and in too many cases. I disagree with the observations of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, but that does not necessarily mean that I disagree with either the noble Lord, Lord Monks, or the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, in their comments, because those that are settled too early do not necessarily go to lawyers to be dealt with.

I will cite two personal circumstances, as others have done. First, when I was chief executive of a business, we were confronted by a malicious claim in relation to racial discrimination. I referred it to my chairman, who said that he wanted us to fight it because it impugned the honour of a number of members of staff, including me, and we were in a financial position to do so. We fought the case and it was settled the day before it went to court by the individual making the claim withdrawing. We paid not one penny, but there was a cost.

There is a clear message for the insurance industry: it is about time it fought a few more cases. I say that because the first time I ever asked a Question in this House was in relation to the case of Mr John Elvin. Rather like the noble Lord, Lord McNally, he was involved in a false claim. He identified it to the insurers on the Monday, because it had happened on a Saturday. He said, “I am convinced this is a false claim”. The insurers, esure, chose to do nothing. It settled it.

The community at large suffers, not only the individual, because we all have to pay for that. The insurers should challenge a few more cases. As I say, in this case the individual had absolute chapter and verse in relation to what had happened and warned the insurance company before it was even contacted by the other party that this was going to be a false claim. It could and should have pursued it. Having cited it in this House, did the insurers come back and say, “You have cited an incorrect case and you haven’t got the facts right”? No, they were absolutely silent. The insurance industry has a lot to improve on, because this should not be a “protect the insurance industry” Bill, it should be a “protect the consumers” Bill, which overall I believe it is.

The noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and others have identified concerns about what can be taken at face value from the insurance industry. Those are quite reasonable questions to ask. I for one have experience of discussing this issue with representatives from insurance companies, not only as regards individual cases but in terms of their general approach. Around a year and a half ago I listened to the evidence given by the ABI to a Select Committee in the House of Commons. The association blamed everyone else, even to the extent of when explaining the difference in practice in other European countries saying, “Oh, there is a different driving style there”. Well, people drive on the other side of the road, but I am not sure that there are that many other differences in driving style that would result in us being identified as the crash claims capital of Europe. The insurance industry has something to answer for in this area.

One other area that has not been touched on during the debate in terms of its implications, although it has been identified, is the ramifications for the health service. If we are to ask people to get signed documentation in one form or another, by implication that will result in an increased burden on the health service. I am not sure how well it will cope with the extra demand and I am also concerned about the prospect of people pressurising GPs and hospital specialists by saying, “Please sign me off for six months. No, I would like nine months. No, I would like 12 months”. People will push it up in one form or another. It is right to go for some form of medical certification, but we should recognise the implications of the burden it will place on the NHS.

Thirdly, I look forward to the future possibility of other similar legislation. If we do not resolve the problems in relation to the insurance industry, claims companies and others pursuing this matter, as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, implied, we will be back in this Chamber considering a “civil liability (schools injury)” Bill, a “civil liability (visiting public buildings injury)” Bill and a “civil liability (travel industry)(sickness on holiday in Benidorm)” Bill. We have to recognise that if this issue is not tackled properly at its source—I believe that the different participants are all responsible—we will need many more pieces of legislation to resolve the problems that we are currently trying to resolve in one field.

17:58

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, it is a tradition in this House to say what a privilege it is to follow the previous speaker. As the 15th speaker in this debate, I have to say that I have enjoyed and learned from all 14 speeches so far. It has been a real privilege to listen to this debate because it reflects the House of Lords at its best: terrifyingly well qualified; taking a roughly hewn Bill and making it even better, and I am sure that the Minister is extremely grateful for all the questions and advice that he is receiving. Well, all good things must come to an end.

I intend to speak on the personal injury discount rate, and in particular the panel that is being established to advise on it, about which I have some questions for the Minister. I wish first to make a general point. It is essential that in a Bill that combines whiplash claims, an area that is infamous for mischief, and the discount rate for personal injuries as a whole, we are not tempted into viewing all claims, or even most claims, as excessive or fraudulent, a point made powerfully by the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge. There are, of course, opportunistic claims and, in some cases, a collusive sub-industry seeks to profit from them, but there are also many injury claims that reflect tragic and agonising circumstances for individuals and their families. It may be that it is too easy for false claims to be effective, but that is wholly separate from determining the value of compensation claims that are found to be genuine and on which the discount rate has a profound effect.

In swinging the pendulum away from apparently excessive claims, we must not allow it to travel so far that it treats genuine claims unfairly or distorts their real value. As the Justice Select Committee reported,

“it may be simply increasing levels of under-compensation for claimants who were already under-compensated”.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, also touched on the difficulty for a claimant who, in a depressed market, has to eat into capital and is thereby unable to recover their position later. We need to be mindful of such unintended consequences. As the Minister reminded us, there is a person behind every claim.

Turning to more specific matters in the Bill, relating to the changed approach to the discount, who are the winners and losers? The winners are those who save substantial sums through reduced payouts: the Government, the NHS and insurers. Some might say that this not a bad thing, particularly if the results in reduced premia are passed on—something that a number of speakers have touched on and expressed a certain amount of cynicism about. However, the losers are people whose lives may have been damaged or curtailed, who may be in lifelong pain and who have to make the payout last them to the end of their days. The winners win at the exact expense of the losers.

I invite the House to consider the question of the inequality of arms between the winners and the losers. The winners are large, well-organised, well-connected and articulate bodies with financial interests in the outcome; they are able to draw on a depth of expertise in the rather arcane world of predicting investment returns far into the future. Contrast that with the losers of the new arrangement. These are typically individuals who have suffered an injury. We cannot assume that they are well resourced, that they are acting collectively, that they are familiar with theories on investment returns or that they are erudite in subjects such as yield curves or risk profiles. I note that the Justice Select Committee report contained these words:

“We advise caution in considering evidence of claimants’ investment behaviour to set the discount rate. Investment by claimants in higher risk portfolios could indicate they are under-compensated and forced into higher-risk investments to generate sufficient return for their future living expenses”.


In the same report, the committee highlighted the inadequate evidence of real behaviour of people seeking to invest safely for their future—a future of uncertain duration, as pointed out by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, uncertain health and uncertain investment returns. The government response to that report accepted that the evidence is indeed limited.

In short, these people need protecting. I do not think that there is any disagreement about that. They are wholly dependent on the Lord Chancellor and the panel set up to determine the discount rate. I am concerned that both the panel and the Lord Chancellor have an incentive, perhaps even a temptation, to keep the discount rate just a shade higher than it should be—what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, referred to as a “tension” in the arrangement. I note that in the Ministry of Justice impact assessment, 45% of the 92 respondents favoured retaining a very low-risk approach, so I do not think that we are looking at unanimous support for the new approach to a higher discount rate.

In its equalities statement, the Ministry of Justice concludes:

“The proposals will therefore be likely to reduce the amount of compensation that claimants receive unless they can demonstrate that a different rate should apply”.


Does the Minister really think that a claimant will be able to persuade a court or the Lord Chancellor that a rate should be changed? Currently, I believe, courts can vary the rate but never do so. I look forward to him correcting me or confirming that.

My second question is: can the Minister tell the House how the powers of the Lord Chancellor are to be contained such that he or she is prevented from perhaps guiding or even overriding the panel, especially as the panel is chaired by the Government’s own actuary, and that person will have two votes out of a total of six?

Turning to the panel itself, it has five members, quorate when only four: the Government Actuary, another actuary, an economist, an investment manager and a person familiar with,

“consumer matters as relating to investments”.

Those are four very clearly technical roles, although getting an economist and an investment manager to give an unambivalent view or one consistent across their professions is always something of a challenge. Each of these four panel members will be aware of the background to their appointment—that rates have been too low and need to be increased. Any dissent from raising rates may be considered too soft-hearted or too pessimistic about future economic growth, which itself is often a matter of political perspective. In short, there may be subtle pressure to pitch the rate a bit higher. Only a small adjustment in the rate will save the winners many millions but could spell a lifetime of struggle and hardship for the losers.

That leaves one role, which, by contrast, sounds to me pretty vague. I note that they are the last person listed as a panel member, and it feels slightly as if they have been bolted on as an afterthought, but perhaps I should not read too much into that. It would appear that this person is almost expected to sign off on behalf of consumers—in other words, on behalf of those receiving these payments. That is going to have to be a person who is not only extremely robust in negotiation but also multi-skilled in the technical areas represented by those who outnumber them, in vote terms, five to one. Otherwise, they are likely to find themselves outgunned or simply overwhelmed by the views of the other committee members, to say nothing of having only a single vote. My third question to the Minister is: can he tell the House whether, and on what basis, he feels that the last panel member is sufficient to counteract an inherent tendency for the panel to adopt a perhaps marginally overoptimistic view of the economic future? I say again that even the smallest tweak upwards in the discount rate will have a very significant negative consequence for the claim.

My final question to the Minister is: can he look again at the composition of the panel and the roles of the panel members so that he can assure the House that there is a fair balance of representation, both numerically and in terms of firepower? So often it is possible, in seeking to right one wrong, unintentionally to create another. This Bill in large measure seeks to prevent false claims of overpayment, but we must not in the process end up with a system that could deprive of adequate compensation those who need and deserve it.

18:08

[Lord Ribeiro (Con)]

My Lords, I find myself not only at the end of the list of speakers but surrounded by lawyers and other more knowledgeable people than I on this subject. The Bill affects patients—those who have been injured and those who seek compensation. As a clinician, I have witnessed some of these injuries, which range from merely a stiff neck to a quadriplegic patient, as was mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead.

I have also despaired of the length of time it takes before cases are settled and compensation made. Sadly, in some instances the patients involved receive substantially less than their lawyers and claims companies. Unlike car or house insurance, in which the insurer knows the accident falls within the terms of their policy, clinical negligence poses a unique problem. The doctor often does not know that there has been an incident that might result in a claim for negligence. Clinical negligence cases have a long tail. The doctor is often notified three to five years after the incident.

The Medical Defence Union, to which I am grateful for providing some of the data I will be using today, noted 1,000 claims since 1995 with more than ten years between the incident and the notification. The limitation period on claims is three years from the date of the incident or three years from when the patient was aware that the alleged negligence had occurred. The long tail means that indemnifiers need sufficient funds to pay claims years into the future.

As we have heard from many speakers, the drastic change in the discount rate from 2.5% to 0.75% from 20 March last year has had the practical effect of inflating substantially awards to patients and litigants. I shall give one example from a surgical context. Before the discount rate, the MDU’s highest payment on behalf of a consultant member was £9.2 million to a patient with a spinal injury, who would be expected to live for many years. After March 2017, a similar claim would cost £17.45 million. With children, it is even worse, because they have a much longer future ahead of them. In one case involving a GP, a child aged 14 with a 50-year life expectancy would have expected to receive £8.4 million at the 2.5% discount rate. That same patient would now receive £17.5 million at the 0.75% rate.

The financial crisis related to this policy is huge. When inflation is added to a claim—let us say at 10%; I know that the rate is lower at the moment—claims double every seven years. The National Audit Office produced a good report on this matter in September 2017, Managing the Costs of Clinical Negligence in Trusts, where it recognised the problem and noted that the drivers of the cost of clinical negligence claims are related to the legal and economic environment and are not linked to patient safety—I shall return to patient safety later and how the health service safety investigations body legislated for last year can help reduce litigation through a learning culture.

The spiralling cost of claims is beyond the control of doctors and other healthcare professionals. Paragraph 16 of the NAO’s report states:

“There is no evidence yet that the rise in clinical negligence claims is related to poorer patient safety, but declining performance against waiting time standards is one factor which increases the risk of future claims from delayed diagnosis or treatment”.


The NHS Resolution annual report for the financial year ending 31 March 2017 focused on the impact of the discount rate and the financial crisis that it had caused for the NHS. It stated:

“The liabilities arising from incidents up to 31 March 2017 for all types of claims have increased significantly, with the provision reported in our accounts increasing from £56.4 billion in 2015/16 to £65.1 billion in 2017/18. In addition to the changes in discount rate factors, these increases are due to continued inflation for damages awards and legal costs, and the growing number of cases where we provide for the cost of care for life”.


In a letter to the Lord Chancellor in January 2018, the NHS Confederation raised the issue of rising costs and the impact of the discount rate. It noted that the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Budget speech of March 2017 had indicated that the Government had put aside £5.9 billion for three years to 2020 to protect the NHS from the effects of the change in the personal injury discount rate. My question for my noble and learned friend the Minister is: what happens after 2020? If the problem is not resolved by then, costs will surely rise. Perhaps the Minister can say where we are with the consultation on the discount rate being carried out by the Ministry of Justice and when we can expect to learn the results. What progress are the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Health and Social Care making on the recommendation of the National Audit Office that a co-ordinated strategy is required to manage the growth in clinical negligence costs by September 2018?

One major block to reducing clinical negligence costs to the NHS, as was mentioned earlier by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and other noble Lords, is Section 2(4) of the Law Reform (Personal Injuries) Act 1948. I look forward to hearing more about this, and I hope that the Minister will be in a position to provide an amendment in Committee so that we can explore it a bit further.

There is no doubt that Section 2(4) was enacted in good faith at the birth of the National Health Service—70 years ago in 1948. It completely ignored care that could be provided in the NHS. One wonders whether this might have been—it is just my thought—because few lawyers in those days would have considered seeking treatment in the new health service, preferring to stay with what they knew best. Currently, however, bodies such as the Medical Defence Union, the Medical Protection Society and NHS Resolution are prevented by Section 2(4) from compensating patients on the basis of care provided by the NHS—even if that care is of a high standard and has been provided before the award. Thus, billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money earmarked for the NHS finds its way instead into the independent care sector.

Currently, a claimant awarded damages on the presumption that he or she will pay for care and treatment privately is not precluded from using NHS care. Some claimants, having been awarded compensation, have admitted that they have gone on to use the NHS. That seems like a double whammy if ever there was one.

Surely it is time to stop robbing Peter to pay Paul. It is time that Section 2(4) of the 1948 Act was repealed. Unless we do that, I have great concerns about the long-term sustainability of the NHS and social care, a subject that we shall debate on Thursday. I have grave concerns that we will not be able to fund the NHS if it continues to incur the liabilities so graphically described by many speakers today. The NAO report shows that in 2016-17 10,600 new clinical negligence claims were registered with NHS Resolution under the Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts—CNST. Furthermore, NHS Resolution spent £1.6 billion on claims in 2016-17 and there is a £60 billion provision to pay for the future cost of claims arising in 2016-17.

This is unsustainable. As in the film “We Need to Talk About Kevin”, we need to talk about repealing Section 2(4). Although the scope of this Bill is tight, I am sure that there are enough noble and noble and learned Lords here to make it possible to include this.

Finally, the proposed health service safety investigation body will provide an opportunity to address the rising cost of litigation and a safe space for healthcare professionals to meet and discuss healthcare issues—and near misses—that could lead to litigation. The NAO proposes a safety and learning team to engage with trusts on patient safety issues, but I believe that in the HSSB we will have a force for good that could do much to reduce the cost of litigation and at the same time improve patient safety.

More medical input has been suggested, and I agree with my noble friend the Minister of State that no settlement should be possible without a medical report. I agree, too, with the views of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, that a committee—advisory or otherwise—supporting the Lord Chancellor should include a medical expert, for the reasons the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, gave. Medical knowledge and diagnostic assessments and skills are improving continuously and we may reach a point when we can set a timeframe for how long an injury may last.

18:20

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, we have had an extremely strong debate with important contributions from all noble Lords who have spoken, which has delivered much to consider in Committee.

I will begin with whiplash claims. There has plainly been an explosion of such claims over recent years, many of them exaggerated, unnecessary or fraudulent, even if the last few years have not continued that upward trend. My noble friend Lord McNally and the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, made the point that not only false whiplash claims but other claims have mushroomed. There can be no doubt that the ban on solicitors paying referral fees has helped to restrict the trend but there is considerable evidence of the ban being circumvented, particularly with the help of claims management companies.

Cold calling generates a great many claims—the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, is not the only Member of this House with repeated experience of this—but the very fact that this practice is so widespread suggests that not everyone responds with a rejection. I understand that it is difficult to control cold calling by claims management companies operating from abroad but there is no excuse for our not doing everything we can to stop this direct incitement to fraud. We agree with the Government that we must try to stamp out unmeritorious, exaggerated and fraudulent claims.

If I may be permitted to add to the accumulation of anecdotal evidence, my wife had a similar experience to that of Lady McNally when she hit the back of a car that was in front of her, ever so gently—so she tells me, anyway. Out stepped five strong young men, on their way to a paintballing and laser-gaming session. They were polite, charming and concerned as to whether my wife was all right, and they all assured her that they were fine. So off they went to their paintballing and laser gaming; a week later, my wife received a claim for some £13,000 in respect of their five alleged whiplash injuries. She told our insurers that she did not believe any of them were genuinely injured and that they had all told her they were unhurt. We have not found out whether the insurers paid out but, since we have heard nothing further, I suspect that they did. This illustrates a major problem, which is that it is often easier for insurers to give in and pay small claims than to investigate and fight them—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Monks, and others. It is a point that will not be assisted by reducing the amount payable in such claims.

However, while we must do everything we can to stamp out false claims, in so doing we must take care not to prevent those with genuine claims recovering fair compensation. I reiterate the point made by a number of noble Lords: it is unfortunate that this legislation is being dealt with separately from the Government’s proposals to increase the small claims limit, with which this legislation is closely connected and which will have a number of significantly unjust outcomes.

First, increasing the small claims limit for personal injury claims to £5,000 would prevent cost recovery for claims below that sum. It would thus deny very large numbers of genuine claimants legal advice and representation because the only way they can afford lawyers in these cases is by relying on conditional fee agreements and the recovery of costs from insurers—a point well made by the noble Lord, Lord Monks, and the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge. This will affect not just road traffic accidents. My noble friend Lord Sharkey mentioned the plight of other vulnerable road users, including cyclists and pedestrians, who will find it difficult to bring claims without legal help. Many other claims will be affected as well.

The increase in the small claims limit will increase the number of litigants in person and reduce access to justice in general, hitting, as always, the most vulnerable citizens the hardest. Furthermore, the increase will take the vast majority of whiplash claims outside the pre-action protocol for low-value personal injury claims in road traffic accidents and the portal associated with it, which, for all its faults, has provided a route to settling many of these claims quickly and economically. If the small claims limit is to be increased, then I suggest the scope of the portal and the protocol should be broadened, or at least we should have a new parallel protocol to assist claimants in person in these cases. I draw some support from the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, in that regard, but I regard £5,000 as simply too high for the small claims limit and would endorse the £3,000 figure proposed by the Bar Council and the Personal Injuries Bar Association.

Turning to the detail of the Bill, I share with my noble friend Lord Sharkey and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, the view of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, expressed in trenchant terms, that it is inappropriate that whiplash is undefined on the face of the Bill and that the initial tariff for damages is left to be determined by regulations. We hope that the Government will follow the usual line and conventional course of accepting the committee’s recommendations before the start of Committee on 10 May and put down amendments defining whiplash injury and spelling out the initial tariff in the Bill. As to the figures suggested for the tariff in the impact assessment on the whiplash proposals, included in the information pack helpfully provided by the Government, table 6 on page 26 says it all. The Government have in mind to reduce the damages for pain, suffering and loss of amenity for injuries of less than three months’ duration from £1,800 to £235, and for injuries of three to six months’ duration from £2,250 to £470 and so on. These are drastic reductions indeed. It is pretty clear that the intention is to make such claims not worth bringing. We are all for getting rid of fraudulent and unmeritorious claims; we are not for denying honest claimants reasonable compensation for genuine injuries.

We can see the reasoning behind the proposal that claims should not be settled without medical reports, and I should add to my registered interest as a practising barrister—I am not sure this is a declarable interest—in that I have recently represented an insurer in a case involving such settlements. We can see why making medical reports compulsory is likely to deter false and inflated claims. I do, however, stress the need for reporting doctors to question claimants’ accounts of whiplash injuries closely in order to weed out inflated or false claims. One of the difficulties with whiplash injuries is that generally, all the doctor has to go on is the account of the patient. Another, is that the estimation of duration is usually carried out in advance and is notoriously both difficult and variable.

However, to avoid unfairness to genuine claims, the cost of medical reports—which I understand from MedCo to be some £180 plus VAT—must be recoverable. I have asked the noble and learned Lord to find out about that, but have since noted that in paragraph 5.121 on page 33 of the impact statement, an expectation is noted that:

“Insurers will have savings for 120,000 medical reports they would no longer be responsible for of around £22 million per annum, and associated medical report VAT of about £4 million per annum”.


Doing the maths, 120,000 multiplied by £180 is £21.6 million. So it is pretty clear that whoever compiled the impact assessment expected claimants with injuries likely to have a duration of less than three months to pay £216 including VAT for a medical report in the hope of recovering £235, leaving the princely sum of £19 to represent compensation for the injury. The tariff proposed in the impact assessment is far too low, and in this I am afraid I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral.

Furthermore, I can see no reason why the tariff should be set by the Lord Chancellor. If there is to be a tariff—though I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, that flexible guidelines may be better, and I agree with the observations of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas—is not the sensible proposal that any tariff should be established by the Judicial College? Why should damages for whiplash injuries not be comparable to damages for other injuries? The Government have made no convincing case on that.

My last point on whiplash is that all the savings from these reforms should be passed on to policyholders. I am not convinced by the Government’s touching faith in the insurance industry, nor even by the regulatory stick mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. I would like to see a healthier scepticism on the part of the Government and, if need be, a clear statement that if savings are not passed on to policyholders then the industry may be subjected to a tax penalty on a windfall saving.

I turn, more briefly, to Part 2, on the discount rate. We support the move from a very low-risk to a low-risk investment assumption, principally for the reason given by the Minister that in practice the investment of damages is not generally undertaken on a very low-risk basis. In particular, we fully accept the need, on which the noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro, expounded, to reduce the cost to the NHS of catastrophic injury clinical negligence claims. I urge the Government to accept the suggestion made by my noble friend Lord Sharkey and the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, that we try to move faster in implementing the first change of rate, as the present negative rate is so plainly wrong, as the noble Earl has persuasively argued. Defining the level of risk is difficult, though, and I join the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, in seeking more guidance from the Government on their approach; there is too little at present.

We are also unclear as to why it has to be the Lord Chancellor who determines the discount rate. The Government have said this is a political decision, but are they really right about that? Why should the expert panel not report to a judge or judges or to the Judicial College, taking on an expanded role? The speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, illustrated the difficulties facing a Lord Chancellor in this task.

I am also unpersuaded that a fixed period of three years for the time between reviews is appropriate, but I do not accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and others that a fixed five-year period should be a substitute. Interest rates change fast in some periods and very slowly in others. Would it not be better for the expert panel to meet annually or every two years to consider whether the discount rate needed changing in the light of circumstances? If the panel’s view were that no change were needed, the rate would be left unchanged. If the panel thought the rate did or might need to change, it could conduct a full review and produce a report, which, as I say, I suggest could be to the Judicial College.

On the composition of the panel, I accept that an independent panel of experts is intended rather than one representative of either claimants or insurers. However, I suggest that to meet the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, the legislation should include a requirement that the panel consider the interests of claimants and insurers even-handedly. I also accept that it should include a medical expert.

Lastly, I turn to periodical payments in cases where there are long-term elements to awards, often for the long-term care of the catastrophically injured, of whose claims the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, spoke so movingly. Unfortunately, the take-up of periodical payments orders has been low. This may be partly because the discount rate has been very low so that lump sums have been unduly high. I suggest, or suspect, that many claimants and their families are also attracted by lump sums even where periodical payments would be more suitable. The problem with lump sum awards is that expectation of life is actuarially determined and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbots, pointed out, it can therefore never be exactly right. Some claimants die earlier than expected, leaving a windfall inheritance for their heirs. More seriously, others live longer than expected so that their damages run out well before they die and they are left without the lifelong support the court intended them to have.

Will the Government make proposals to encourage greater use of periodical payments orders? I note the support for them expressed by the noble Lords, Lord Hodgson, Lord Beecham, and others. They provide some answers to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, on the need to protect claimants from the effect of a raised discount rate. I am entirely unimpressed by the argument that defendants’ insurers, the Medical Defence Union or others prefer to pay out lump sum. These parties after all represent the tortfeasors and if they are required in this sophisticated economy of ours to reinsure so as to pay out what are in effect annuities in place of lump sums, I see no reason why they should not do so.

I also join the noble Lords, Lord Sharkey, Lord Ribeiro, Lord Faulks and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, in inviting the Government to revisit the basis on which medical treatment is costed under the 1948 Act. If a way could be found to do so, it would be a beneficial use of this House’s time.

I close by expressing my gratitude to the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, for arranging a very helpful meeting of all Peers to discuss these reforms and to consider amendments. I look forward to working with the Government and others to improve this Bill.

18:37

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, one noble Lord’s declared interest is perhaps another’s experience and expertise, or perhaps even better put, interests and experience can sit simultaneously with a noble Lord. Perhaps uniquely, in what has been an incredibly thought-provoking debate, I seem to be without interest or expertise. However, I have listened with enormous care to the wonderful tutorial that noble Lords have given me. I have read, as have so many other noble Lords, many submissions to which we have had access in this House. Just as I respect the interests and experience of those debating inside this Chamber, I do not think it is completely fair to suggest that everything from outside is, as one noble Lord suggested, noise.

The noble Lord, Lord Faulks, said that there are some real polycentric issues at stake and important, occasionally competing, concerns. I do not accept that all insurers are unscrupulous, nor do I accept that all claims are fraudulent or indeed, that all professional legal practitioners who are trying to do their best for their clients in this area are ambulance chasers. Further, I too have had the benefit of meeting the Minister, so nor do I believe that Her Majesty’s Government are somehow completely captured by the insurance industry in what they are trying to do in this Bill. However, to improve it requires listening to some of the concerns that have been expressed both inside and outside the Chamber.

The Bill addresses its purported targets by—how can I put it?—circuitous routes. It is concerned with, at worst, fraud and, at best, inflation of, for example, whiplash claims. I agree with, I believe, the majority of noble Lords, that compulsory medical reports before settlement must be a good idea. It would be good to see clear provision in the Bill for the cost of such reports to be met by insurers where settlements are made. That seems completely fair, and might be something we could look to. But, essentially, the Bill does not directly deal with fraud.

Another stated target is unscrupulous claims managers and McKenzie friends. Again, there is nothing in the Bill about that public policy problem and social evil. These problems have been pointed out by a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord McNally and Lord Hodgson, the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, my noble friend Lord Monks and the noble Lord, Lord Faulks. We know that there is some level of problem here; I do not think anyone doubts that.

Another target is the unfairness of overly high insurance premiums. Again, the Bill does not directly regulate insurance premiums. We are told that industry leaders have made a public pledge to pass on the benefits of limiting claims to insured persons, but there is nothing in the Bill at the moment to give teeth to that promise. It would be helpful to so many people to hear from the Minister about the teeth in that promise.

Finally, a target of the Bill is said to be devastating pressures on the NHS, and perhaps on social care, too. Again, this is a very indirect approach towards the devastating pressures on the NHS and on social care in this country at this time. I echo the sentiments of my noble friend Lord Beecham—perhaps other discussions need to be had about the 1948 Act and so on—that that devastating pressure has ultimately to be met with a more honest conversation about taxation with a country that loves its NHS.

Those are the targets. But, instead of the direct approach, the Bill approaches these problems somewhat indirectly. First, in relation to whiplash injuries in Part 1, it does this by limiting damages in a particular class of claims. I have to say that, on a day when there have been very special celebrations in Parliament Square, I was a little sad to notice that I was to be just one of two noble Baronesses speaking in this Second Reading debate. But that disappointment began to fall away when I heard the extraordinary, eloquent and principled speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge. She spoke of the need to hear the voice not of lawyers, insurers or any other professionals and experts but of victims. I can only tell her that we heard that channelled through her voice today, and I am sure that people outside will be very grateful for that. She pointed out with particular clarity the problem of principle in singling out one class of victims—not even a whole class of victims but a class within a class of victims—and saying that they must have their damages limited by the Bill and by regulations under it, as opposed to other victims, who may also be inflating or misstating their claims.

That is a matter of principle and will be a concern for people on the outside who are looking to understand what is behind this legislation. It is important to address that principle if we are to retain the public’s trust in the legislative process and in public policy making. I moved closer and closer to the noble Baroness’s devastating logic when she spoke about the role of the Judicial College and her concerns about why these particular damages should be set by the Lord Chancellor, not by the judges, as with all other tortious damages in our law. The Minister will, no doubt, address her concerns.

The second circuitous route, and a matter of enormous concern expressed on all sides of the House, is the incredibly broad delegation granted to the Lord Chancellor in defining whiplash and then setting the level of damages. The Delegated Powers Committee’s findings on this cannot be easily ignored. We listened to the concerns and I hope we can take them on board in amendments as the Bill progresses. The noble and learned Lords, Lord Hope and Lord Thomas, the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and many other noble Lords pointed out that to give the Lord Chancellor the defining power over the problem and then the further power to set the damages is a step to far. It is a precedent that we do not want to set in any Bill. It is a wider constitutional point that applies to this Bill and we do not want to be doing it in future. It is a problem in relation both to the rule of law—and clarity and certainty in law—and to parliamentary sovereignty as opposed to ministerial fiat. I hope that the Minister will take that on board and that there can be further clarity and definition on the face of the Bill.

The third concern that has been expressed is about inequality of arms and, in particular, the effect of combining measures in this Bill with the increase in the small claims jurisdiction. As the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, pointed out, in practice even amounts of money which are small to the ears of those of us in this Chamber are incredibly important to a lot of people who will hear about, and perhaps read about, this debate. Small amounts of money can be life changing for people. To leave a greater number of people who have been the victims of even relatively minor injuries unrepresented, with no means of recovering costs and, therefore, no means of getting proper representation, is an affront to access to justice. In the civil sphere in particular, that has already been diluted, if not positively undermined, in recent years.

The Bill attempts to nudge victims, even those with quite serious injuries, into becoming slightly higher-risk investors. Some on the outside have suggested that they are to become stockbrokers and have the confidence and expertise to become more adept at investing and managing single lump-sum payments. Noble Lords will have read the argument against that. Equally, the noble Lords, Lord Hodgson and Lord Faulks, and others have pointed to the inescapable logic of the preference for periodical payment orders. Yet there is nothing explicit in the Bill to incentivise those orders, as opposed to encouraging slightly higher-risk investments or discouraging playing it safe. In the case of an ordinary lay person who is not used to managing investments, particularly if they have had a serious personal injury, one can understand the instinct for playing it safe. Again, that was pointed out by several noble Lords. The point about lack of representation was mentioned particularly by my noble friend Lord Monks and the noble Lord, Lord Marks. I agreed with so much of what he said.

It is always worth listening very carefully to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, on matters of this kind. As I heard references to the discount, the complex nature of this decision, what is being asked of the Lord Chancellor in Part 2 and the prophet-like powers that the noble and learned Lord described, echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and others, I really thought that we might give further thought to how we could achieve greater clarity, transparency and accountability in the Bill for this incredibly complex decision over which so much might turn for victims and claimants on the one hand, but also, as the noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro, and others pointed out, for the NHS. I hope that on that matter, as well as on so many others in this Bill, there will be real room for the kind of thoughtful debate and constructive collaboration to improve what I believe to be a genuine attempt to balance a number of important societal interests.

18:51

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, I thank the whole House for all the contributions on the Bill today. I might not answer every query posed during this stage of consideration, but—and I hope this reflects the steps that we have taken already—I would be perfectly open to, and would welcome, meeting any of your Lordships who wish to engage with me and officials prior to Committee to discuss particular issues. That is an invitation I hope at least some noble Lords will consider taking up if they have any queries.

Clearly, there are different views about the state of the Bill at this stage, but I could not accept the observation made by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, that it is rough-hewn. Respectfully, it appears to me that a great deal of work has been done to prepare for the issues that we shall have to address. I will look at those issues in two parts, as does the Bill, and begin with whiplash.

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, took issue with some of the statistics and suggested that perhaps matters had turned, but let us be candid. I shall not use some of the terminology used by noble Lords about a racket or anything else. What we have is a very obvious and clear trend in the development of claims for road-traffic-based whiplash injury. It has been going on for more than 10 years. The consequences are very clear and obvious; it may well be that we should have considered acting sooner to address this issue, but act we must and that is what we intend to do.

The New England Journal of Medicine recently carried out an analysis of the incidence of whiplash injury and the availability of compensation. It discovered a very obvious correlation between the availability of compensation and the incidence of whiplash claims reported in road traffic cases. The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, observed that when he attended meetings with the reinsurers Munich Re in Germany it had alluded to the situation in the United Kingdom, which is quite exceptional. Unless Scandinavians have much thicker necks than us in this part of the world, there is little to conclude except that a claims culture has developed, because the incidence of these claims in that part of the world is very different from our own.

We therefore have to address how these claims will be contained in the wider public interest and, ultimately, in the consumer interest. However, I do not suggest that any one part of the community is wholly or solely to blame for the situation we now find ourselves in. For example, I do not demur from the suggestion that insurers have been complicit in the development of this claims culture over the past 10 years or more in their willingness to avoid undue expense and simply to settle claims without the necessity for any form of real evidence. Many noble Lords have experience of that themselves.

However, there is some rationale to the way in which we are attempting to approach this matter, and it includes the reference to proposed changes in the small claims limit as well. The idea of a tariff is not entirely novel; such an approach has already been taken in Italy and in Spain, where they faced a similar claims culture. We are, first, bringing together a tariff and, secondly, making it a requirement that no claim can be settled without a medical report, or MedCo report. I discern that there is almost universal approval for that step. Thirdly, we have agreed that the claims portal for small claims will be reviewed, which the noble Lord, Lord Marks, suggested would be required, to make it accessible to claimants themselves when they come to make claims. It will of course be simpler for them to make that claim in circumstances where they know that there is, beyond the issue of liability, a tariff that determines the damages for pain and suffering. I emphasise those damages because this does nothing in respect of the claims for wage loss and other outgoings incurred by claimants in the circumstances.

I will also take up a point mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, with regard to the cost as compared with the tariff of damages at the very lower end. I understand that where liability is accepted, the cost of the MedCo report will be a relevant recoverable cost, no matter whether this is in the small claims court or otherwise. Another question that has been raised is how the original cost of the MedCo report is funded, and we are looking at that and discussing it with interested parties at present. However, there will be no material issue over the recovery of the MedCo report cost itself, which the noble Lord identified as in the region of £180 plus VAT.

That, then, is the background. There are other potential targets. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, referred to the conduct of claims management companies, and I will say a little about that. As noble Lords will be aware, we are already taking steps through the Financial Guidance and Claims Bill, which is making its way through the other place, to address some of the difficulties that arise with regard to claims management companies. First, their regulation will go to the FCA. As the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, observed, that is a regulator with teeth, and we consider it properly positioned to deal with claims management companies. There will also be the means to limit the percentage that claims management companies can take from a claimant when they deal with a claim, to try to control their activities in that regard.

We have of course been concerned with the issue of cold calling, which I suspect has bedevilled virtually all of us at one point or another. The Information Commissioner is concerned with that as well. One of the difficulties, and this was touched upon in the course of debate, is how to regulate the unregulated. One of the real difficulties is that in the context of cold calling, we have seen the claims management companies, or those who carry out this cold calling, move out of the United Kingdom and carry out this conduct from abroad. It is a very simple thing for them to do, and it is a very difficult thing for us to stop. That is why you have to look at alternative routes to addressing the wider issue that we have to deal with. We are certainly concerned that we need to control the activities of the claims management companies, although they alone are not responsible for the way in which this whole industry of whiplash claims has developed.

I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Monks, who I appreciate is not entirely sympathetic to the Government’s position on this, did make a passing remark in the context of other claims, such as workplace claims. He said the abuse was a lot less than in road traffic accident cases, but implicitly he accepts the existence of abuse in the context of RTA cases, and I believe that is almost universally acknowledged. We seek to address that in Part 1 of the Bill. We consider that we are taking a proportionate approach. Yes, it distinguishes whiplash-type injuries that occur in a road traffic context from other forms of accident or injury, but that is because we have to address a particular mischief. That is what we are doing with Part 1 of the Bill. It appears to us that this is the sensible and considered way forward in order to control this situation.

I note that the Delegated Powers Committee has made a number of recommendations with regard to Part 1 of the Bill. We do not entirely agree with its recommendations, but I have noted the concern expressed by noble Lords about the question of defining whiplash injury. The intention was to have a degree of flexibility, so that if the claims industry developed in a particular direction in response to legislation, we were equipped to deal quite rapidly with that. It may be that noble Lords would like to see rather more in the way of definition so far as whiplash is concerned, and I take on board the observations that have been made.

There is also the question of the tariff, and of course an illustrative tariff was provided in the papers that were produced along with the original Bill and to which reference has been made. We consider that being able to regulate the tariff by the affirmative procedure is a more flexible way of being able to respond to changes. But, again, I hear what noble Lords say and we will have to consider that going forward.

I would like to respond to a number of points made by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey. First of all, I hope I have made clear that medical report costs are recoverable. There was a suggestion that they were not. He referred to the position of other parties such as cyclists being caught, but they are not brought within the tariff on the basis of Part 1 of the Bill. To answer that particular point, they are specifically excluded at Clause 1.

I would like to move on to Part 2, the question of the discount rate, and address a number of points. First of all, it appears to be generally understood that we do need to put in place a means by which the discount rate can be determined and reviewed on a regular basis in order that we do not encounter the sort of situation we had in 2017, when we saw it go from 2.5% to minus 0.75%. I wholly agree with the observations of the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, that the present discount does not realistically reflect the way in which a party—any party—is going to invest funds going forward. Therefore, we have to bring this back into a realistic scenario.

The objective—here I address a number of points made by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell—is not to have representatives of various interested parties partaking in an exercise of trying to agree a rate. The whole point of the structure in Part 2 is that there should be an expert panel, not a representative panel. The noble Lord asked about there being a fair balance of representation on the panel, but that is not the intention or the objective. The idea is that we should have an expert panel to advise the Lord Chancellor.

The intention is that that should be an open exercise so that, for example, the way in which the expert panel reports to the Lord Chancellor will be open. Indeed, in our response to the Justice Select Committee, the Lord Chancellor observed that he would be publishing the recommendations of the panel’s report in circumstances where he received it and was to act upon it. In due course, he will also be required to explain the way in which he fixes the discount rate. Indeed, he will be amenable to judicial review in carrying out that function, so that there will be ultimately an oversight of the way in which he discharges that duty. We consider it appropriate that that should be done openly and effectively in that way.

Clearly, it will be important that the discount rate should be reviewed at regular intervals. We have alighted upon the period of three years for review after considering various representations, but I have heard the references to five years as a review period and the interesting alternative mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, of essentially having an expert panel meeting at regular intervals to consider whether there are circumstances that might require a proper review of the discount rate. We would be open to discussing these alternatives to see how we can effectively ensure that the discount rate continues to reflect the reality of investment.

On the point of investment, I believe there is general consensus that we should move from the very-low risk level to the idea of a low level of risk for investment. That is not to suggest that claimants are going to become stockbrokers—I really do not feel that that is a proper reflection of the situation at all. The intention in Part 2 of the Bill is to bookmark the place in which the expert committee will address the question of how the discount rate should be fixed. It is to give the panel a degree of flexibility in that context between, at one end, very low risk and, at the other end, low risk by an investor who is not concerned about having to provide for their future care.

On the question of future care, which arises most particularly in the context of clinical negligence cases and the subsequent cases of severe injury that very often arise from that, there is always the difficulty of determining not only what the appropriate discount should be but, as noble Lords have observed, what life expectancy may be. That is always an estimate. You could almost say that you invariably get it wrong; you can never be sure that you have got it right. That is why we consider that PPOs are a very important option available to claimants. Looking at the data that has been gathered in arranging guidance for the Bill, we have noted that their use is essentially limited to cases where claims exceed £1 million, and more generally £5 million. They are not always taken up, and one of the problems with the present discount rate is that it would tend to discourage claimants and their advisers from taking up PPOs. But clearly, if you want certainty with regard to future care, one way to secure it is to agree to a PPO, and we would wish to encourage them.

We have to underline, however, that PPOs are not universally available. For example, I understand that the Medical Defence Union, which is a mutual, is not in a position to guarantee future payment of a PPO and therefore not in position to provide them. However, that may alter as we look at the question of indemnity arrangements—for example, in respect of general practitioners—which we are doing at the present time. We certainly wish to encourage the use of PPOs and are looking at providing guidance to claimants and their advisers, in order to ensure that they are taken up in appropriate circumstances.

One further issue that has been raised by a number of your Lordships is Section 2(4) of the 1948 Act. We recognise the question that is being raised about this and the appropriateness of maintaining that. Presently, Section 2(4) of the 1948 Act would not fall within the scope of the Bill. I appreciate that, if we were to amend the long title of the Bill, we might be able to bring the matter within scope, but there is a concern that the repeal of Section 2(4) potentially raises issues that will have to be the subject of consultation with interested parties. We are concerned that we need to act promptly, particularly with regard to the discount rate, and it would be unfortunate if that process was materially slowed because of an attempt to bring Section 2(4) and its repeal into the present Bill. I hear what noble Lords have said and am not unsympathetic to the suggestion that the time has come to revisit that provision and understand why we need to maintain it. My concern is that attempting to bring it into the Bill at this stage could have unfortunate consequences for the way in which we are trying to deal with the discount rate.

On that last point, I appreciate the concern about the delay in respect of the discount rate. We are proposing to carry out the first review as swiftly as possible. I understand that we are aiming for April 2019, not 2020 as has been suggested. There is a 90-day period and then a 180-day period. There is a need to have an expert panel in place, but considerable steps may be taken in anticipation of the Bill passing to ensure that we have the machinery in place for the swift appointment of an expert panel, so that the review can be carried out as soon as possible. I will take further advice from officials on the question of how far we can go with that sort of preparation prior to Royal Assent of the Bill, in order to move swiftly on that matter.

I appreciate that I have not addressed all of the queries that have been raised this afternoon. In the time available, I regret that I will not be able to do that but, as I said at the outset, I am open to meetings with noble Lords who wish to raise questions on the Bill prior to Committee, and I would welcome the opportunity to engage with them. I beg to move.

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