Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his explanation of this Bill, which I support. Before saying anything substantive, I would like to state how much I value our system of justice and the rule of law—JROL—which is the envy of the world. We know perfectly well that countries such as Russia will be in severe difficulties as long as they persist in loving a strong leader with a weak and corrupt JROL. But you can have too much of a good thing. We have a problem with the compensation culture in this country, and the Government have already taken some steps to deal with it. The problem is that many cases never get to court. Your Lordships have been talking about how the courts would deal with a case, but very often the claimant just gets paid out, because it is easier, and the plaintiff’s organisation decides to cease a commendable activity.

We are also getting into a situation where people are fearful of doing something wrong in an emergency, and then having to deal with litigation. Just for now, I will define an emergency as a situation where action has to be taken immediately in order to prevent the situation from deteriorating further. It is often much easier to do nothing, and frequently people are being incorrectly advised to do nothing. This is despite the fact that there are very few, if any, successful negligence actions in respect of emergency assistance, as your Lordships well know.

Only this morning my taxi driver explained to me that, on his statutory training course, he was advised that he should use his first aid kit only on himself, and not on a member of the general public or an injured motorist. Your Lordships will not be surprised to hear that this was because of the risk of being sued if anything went wrong. Now, we all know that this is completely wrong. But if that is what trainers are telling their students, we must not be surprised if the “do nothing” culture emerges. It certainly seems to me that there has not been much positive change since 2006.

All my life I have been trained that, if an emergency arises, I must do something. I have certainly never hesitated to get stuck in, because that is how I have been programmed. When I was 16 or 17, as a Stowe School CCF cadet, I went off on my own on a serious military internal security exercise with the local TA unit. At the time this was unexceptional, but now it would be a serious child protection matter. When I visited the Regular Army at about 17 years old I was allowed to drive heavy high-mobility vehicles over a severe cross-country route, including swimming the vehicle in the River Weser. This would be absolutely out of the question nowadays. Later, I did significant amounts of TA training involving military logistics. Although we took much greater risks than would be tolerated nowadays—for instance, with driver hours—I cannot recall any significant or life-changing injuries. The payback to society for the modest risk taken was very great indeed. In later years I was engaged in civilian aid operations in Bosnia and Rwanda, and in military operations in Bosnia and Iraq. I also survived for a considerable time as your Lordships’ government spokesman for transport matters in the House of Lords, despite the efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham. So the seed was sown very early on.

Nowadays in my spare time I do a lot of work at the REME museum in Bordon, particularly with tanks and tank transporters. Obviously they are hazardous, but you can be trained in how to operate them safely and responsibly, and that is a useful skill for life. I have no doubt that there are youth groups and charities in the Portsmouth and Southampton areas that try to steer youngsters away from vehicle crime and perhaps gang culture. I could offer some fantastic opportunities for them in getting involved with operating a tank transporter or an armoured recovery vehicle. I know from experience that I could alter a youngster’s whole attitude and make it far easier to secure that all important first job, perhaps with a plant hire company.

The really sad thing is that I know any such scheme is quite impossible for health, safety and compensation-culture reasons. It is simply out of the question. These days, when cadets visit the museum, they cannot even be allowed to climb on the tank. Of course, youngsters outside of the cadets will still get their excitement and adventure but that might be from drugs, motor crime and other undesirable activities.

I turn to the Bill itself. As I understand it, the Bill is mainly concerned with negligence but also covers a breach of a statutory duty, though not a criminal matter. Does a statutory duty include the Health & Safety at Work etc. Act, particularly the Management of Health & Safety at Work Regulations? It would be helpful if the Minister could write to me explaining what is covered and what is not.

During the passage of the Bill in the House of Commons, Ministers seemed to be in some difficulty explaining what, if anything, the Bill did. In my time in government I found case studies very useful for explaining how the legislation worked, and particularly where the dividing line was. Officials hated case studies, and I suspect that this was because they did indeed explain exactly what was and was not intended. The alternative seems to be to let case law develop. I urge the Minister to use case studies to argue his position in Committee.

Some noble Lords think that the Bill goes too far or is unnecessary. I do not think it goes far enough. I do not think that a person should be liable for his actions in an emergency unless a perverse course of action was taken—in other words, no reasonable person with the experience of the person in question would have taken that course of action. In the unlikely event that your Lordships agreed such an amendment, that would surely change the law. It therefore seems to me that the Bill is amendable.

I do not have a problem with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, tabling his reasoned amendment, because the Bill is a relatively short and simple one. However, I disagree with the amendment’s merits. I think that we should give the Bill a Second Reading, while recognising that we will have quite a lot of work to do.