Civil Liability Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Cromwell and Lord Beecham

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 15th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

Was the noble Lord speaking to Amendment 77 or to Amendment 74?

[Lord Beecham]

I was speaking to Amendments 74, 77 and 84.

[Lord Cromwell]

In that case, I shall speak in support of Amendment 77 and cover Amendments 82A, 85A and 90A, which are tabled in my name as probing amendments.

I do not want to make a Second Reading speech, but will open with three points. The first is on the context of the amendments in my name, which is that we are talking about a one-off payment. It has to last the recipient the rest of their days, which is a pretty daunting prospect. Will it keep pace with inflation? Will the recipient die before or after the money runs out? Will the UK and global economies do any good in the next 10, 20 or more years? What returns will be achieved each year from now until the recipient’s death? No matter how clever the Lord Chancellor or expert the panel, these will remain unknowns or, at best, haphazard guesses.

The one thing we do know is that if the discount rates rise, which this Bill is intended to achieve, returns to recipients will fall. By raising the discount rate, we are saying that the investor must—they have no choice—take on more risk. We oblige them to do so. This calls into question the underlying principle of achieving 100% compensation.

Let us not take false comfort from the idea of an expert panel. This is a group of five people who will have to come up with a series of “best guesses” and then seek to arrive at a “best guess of those guesses” to suggest to the Lord Chancellor. The Lord Chancellor remains free to override them.

My concern is that, in its enthusiasm for reducing costs to the NHS and others, the panel will be encouraged in various ways to impose risk on recipients which they are not equipped to gamble with. If the panel does not do so, the Lord Chancellor may. I expressed my concerns about the make-up of the panel at Second Reading, so I will spare your Lordships a repeat of that. We should not forget that the Chancellor is acting for the Government in many of the highest-value cases. That seems a conflict of interest.

What should we do? If the panel is trying to determine a rate on which so much life-altering importance hangs and if we are allowing the Lord Chancellor potentially to vary that rate, we need to be assured that, as far as possible, the rate arrived at is the result of a transparent process and not some magic number produced from a black box and then applied.

My amendments seek to achieve three things: to oblige the Lord Chancellor to a greater extent than the Bill suggests to take account of the panel’s deliberations; to make the panel more transparent in its deliberations and conclusions; and to enable the panel to take into account the realities that the recipient will face in the real world—taxation, inflation and management charges. In the Bill, it is the Lord Chancellor who may take these things into account.

Anyone who has worked in investments knows that such costs are a key determinant of actual returns. With RDR and MiFID II, such charges—for example, management charges—are becoming far less opaque than they used to be. Surely the panel should present the Lord Chancellor with a fully baked rate, not a half-cooked one that has significant ingredients missing.

Turning to the specific amendments, Amendment 77, to which my name was added, obliges the Lord Chancellor to take proper account of the panel. It relates to Amendment 78 in a later group, but that requires matters not to be left simply to the Lord Chancellor’s opinion. I anticipate others speaking to Amendment 77, so I shall leave it there and speak to Amendments 82A, 85A and 90A which are in my name. On Amendments 82A and 90A, the expert panel are supposed to be the experts but they are denied the opportunity to consider the rate in the round, rather than give the Lord Chancellor the half-baked suggestion I referred to a moment ago. The Bill as drafted just provides the Lord Chancellor with opportunities to select his or her own rate. Amendments 82, 82A and 90A place the making of key assumptions where they belong: with the expert panel. Amendment 90A also requires a reasoned explanation by the panel of its decision. This is vital for transparency and understanding. It is also the basis, one hopes, for its voting and for discussion with the Lord Chancellor, including any override that he or she may choose to impose.

Finally, Amendment 85A in my name is again about transparency. Under the Bill as drafted, the Chancellor must give reasons for and publish,

“such information about the response of the expert panel … as the Lord Chancellor thinks appropriate”.

No, my Lords: the Lord Chancellor should publish what the expert panel advises and give a reasoned explanation if he or she departs from its advice. Echoing the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, a few moments ago, just as the Bank of England publishes the voting pattern, so the voting pattern cast by this panel should be published. Only then will we have a clear basis for understanding how the rate has been suggested, whether the Lord Chancellor has altered it and, if so, why. The setting of the rate, we should remember, will have fundamental effects on the lives of people in very distressing circumstances. Surely, they and we have the right to an understanding of what has gone on. My amendment builds on what is already proposed in the Bill but will, I suggest, lead to clearer and more transparent outcomes that are therefore more meaningful, more useful and less open to the temptations of distortion.