Civil Liability Bill [HL]

Lord Hunt of Wirral Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 27th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble and learned friend on his expert handling of this Bill, together with his ministerial team, my noble friend Lady Vere, and their officials.

Part 1 has indeed proved to be more contentious than many of us expected, but I hope that all noble Lords have now recognised the true and serious nature of the problem that the Government need to tackle and also accept that the radical solution of a tariff is thoroughly justified. The social evil that we have discussed on many occasions, which this part is intended to address, will not completely evaporate as a result of these measures. There are too many vested interests at work for the compensation culture to vanish overnight. No doubt they will continue to set citizen against citizen and are already crafting new ways around any controls that we seek to impose. None the less, I feel that this Bill will certainly slow down the process and, I hope, end this great country being known as the whiplash capital of the world.

On Part 2, I am delighted at the consensus across the House that time is very much of the essence, as we lawyers would say. The overwhelming view of this House has been that change to the discount rate cannot come soon enough. I congratulate my noble and learned friend the Minister and noble Lords on all sides of this House who have all worked so hard to eliminate the scope for delays in reaching a first review.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames]

My Lords, on behalf of these Benches, I add my thanks to the noble and learned Lord the Minister and to the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, for their help, courtesy and consideration throughout the passage of this Bill. We have all approached the Bill with common purposes; on some of the issues, we have suggested different ways of achieving those purposes. With co-operation from Members across the House, in the Conservative Party and on the Labour and Cross Benches, we have produced a set of amendments that have now improved the Bill significantly as it goes to the Commons. If I may say so, it has been a model of co-operation. We are very grateful to the noble and learned Lord for the many meetings that he has held at which he has explained the Government’s thinking and listened to us, and for the letters that he sent us explaining their thinking and, sometimes, changes in thinking. Thank you.