Civil Liability Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Hunt of Wirral and Lord Faulks

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 12th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, this group contains 18 amendments, of varying importance. I declare my interest as having been a partner for 50 years—this year—in the global commercial law firm DAC Beachcroft LLP. I was so pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Handsworth, in his place earlier because for many years I had the honour to act for the Transport and General Workers’ Union when, on the instructions of Mr Albert Blyghton, I went into battle to recover substantial damages where people had been seriously injured.

In supporting the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, and the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, I remind the House that here we are dealing with a racket, as described by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, which has grown up in this country thanks to what is termed the compensation culture, encouraging not just fraudulent but spurious—I think that is a better description—claims, which have now made us the global whiplash capital. I greatly regret that.

After all, in this group of amendments we are talking about only minor injuries. As has been pointed out by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, there has been a political decision. I remind noble Lords that in the Red Book in 2015, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr George Osborne, said:

“The government will bring forward measures to reduce the excessive costs arising from unnecessary whiplash claims … including by … removing the right to general damages for minor soft tissue injuries”.


I am not sure everyone here was present when we had a debate—and we have had a number of subsequent debates—about the need to tackle this whiplash culture.

Not everything George Osborne said in that Autumn Statement was received with universal acclamation but I well remember that that particular announcement was welcomed on all sides of the House. “At last”, we said, “we’re going to get rid of the whiplash culture”. There was a clear consensus in this House that the law and the courts had allowed a racket to flourish, leading to a manifest and substantial injustice—the injustice of millions of law-abiding insurance policyholders having to pay over the odds to fund this mass of bogus claims. We can point the finger at the insurance industry, perhaps, for allowing too many but we are talking not just about insurance-funded claims but about a whole range of minor claims, and we have to decide as a House whether we intend to fulfil what I understood we had agreed to do about this racket.

I congratulate my noble and learned friend the Minister on the determination he has shown to end this racket and to end the injustice. We have identified an injustice and we have promised to act to end it.

There is a judicious balance in the Bill, as one would expect, and those with genuine minor injuries have nothing at all to fear from it. The option of doing what George Osborne initially recommended, namely to remove general damages completely from soft tissue claims, has perhaps wisely been abandoned in favour of the proposed tariff. In Amendment 1, as we have already heard, the Government have further answered their critics in this House by putting a clearer definition into the Bill. It is not perfect but it is a lot better than the previous one in the draft regulations. It comes closer to capturing the scale of the problem.

I thought we had a consensus in this Chamber in July last year, when we debated the need to tackle the regulation of claims farmers during the passage of the then Financial Guidance and Claims Bill. I highlighted at the time the work of Carol Brady, in her excellent report in 2015, and the need to follow the money. Noble colleagues on all sides of the House agreed in that debate that these were important measures; now, we have to tackle the money itself, in the form of damages and solicitors’ fees, and we are of course suddenly beset by an enormous number of last-minute amendments. I must share with the House that, following the then Chancellor of the Exchequer’s announcement, I was told: “Don’t think for a moment that this will ever pass, because the jobs of thousands of those employed in the claims management industry will be lost. They will fight hard to stop the Government’s action”.

Why should the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, of all people, be challenging the Government’s stated intent here? I have already heard the depressing rallying call of access to justice. In truth, I worry about some of the briefings that we have received in preparing for this debate. They really seek to delay what action the Government are taking. I know that the noble and learned Lord, together with many other Members of this House, has received instructions from me personally in the past and I have huge respect for him. We must surely recognise, as the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, reminded us, that the Government committed in the manifesto at the last election to tackle the rampant compensation culture around whiplash claims—the same culture which pays the bills for those who continually text and call us with offers of money for nothing. We must not allow our eye to be taken off that ball.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, referred to the Judicial College guidelines. Amendments 11, 17A and 17B propose sagely that those guidelines are the cure of all ills, but they are really not the answer to the question we have to address. I do not know the guidelines off by heart but I know this particular section, because it reminds us that,

“the figures … merely represent what other judges have been awarding for similar injuries”.

That is all the guidelines do. They also say:

“The figures in this new edition recognise that … the general increase in RPI … since … 2015 has been 4.8%”.


With respect to the good work that the Judicial College does to make awards consistent, the guidelines simply record the numbers previously thought of by other judges over the years and then uprate them for inflation. These and other amendments proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, in fact oppose the entire substance of Part 1. They ask us to agree to leave the problem to the judges to sort out.

I respectfully answer that the courts have had many years to contain the problem but I have yet to see any conspicuous success. The assessment of damages by judges is based on a ratchet effect; it can go up but it can never slip back, as the Judicial College guidelines themselves admit. Judges do not redress the balance at any time. On one recent occasion when they had the opportunity to do so—the noble and learned Lord may recall Heil v Rankin in 2000—the judges increased damages for all but minor injuries and left the damages for those alone, so the control effect is simply absent. That is why it is now up to Parliament to do what needs to be done.

I conclude by reminding colleagues that a graphic illustration of leaving such matters solely to the discretion of judges can be found in a High Court appeal case last month, Molodi v Aviva Insurance. A whiplash claim was initially accepted by the county court judge, even though Mr Molodi had lied on a number of aspects of his case. The High Court judge in Manchester, Mr Justice Spencer, threw the claim out and issued a salutary warning to the judiciary,

“it is also pertinent to recognise the problem that fraudulent or exaggerated whiplash claims have presented for the insurance industry and the courts. This was recognised in March 2018 when the Ministry of Justice published a Civil Liability Bill … proposing new, fixed caps on claims … The problem of fraudulent and exaggerated whiplash claims is well recognised and should, in my judgment, cause judges in the County Court to approach such claims with a degree of caution, if not suspicion”.

The need to issue such a general warning to fellow judges belies the suggestion that we can safely leave this issue for judges to control. The tariff is sorely needed. It applies the brake, which only the Government can apply, not the courts.

[Lord Faulks (Con)]

My Lords, I repeat my declaration of interests made at previous stages of the Bill. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and others have advanced powerful arguments in favour of protecting the entitlement of those genuinely injured who seek compensation for whiplash. Coming from such a distinguished source, these arguments clearly demand a great deal of respect around the House. It is therefore—to adopt a phrase used by judges—my misfortune not to agree with the noble and learned Lord’s amendment. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, referred to the fact that judges from time to time decide matters of policy and relied on the case of Caparo and the fair, just and reasonable test. It is of course for Parliament to decide fairness, justice and reasonableness, and it should approach this problem with that in mind.

It is undoubtedly true that some genuine claimants who have sustained whiplash injuries will be entitled to rather less than they would have been if the Bill becomes law, but we need to stand back and consider the policy driver behind these changes. At Second Reading, the Minister pointed out that there has been a 70% rise in 10 years in the number of road traffic accident-related personal injury claims. Of these, 85% are for whiplash-related injuries. In 2016-17, there were 670,000 whiplash claims—it is rather surprising that anybody gets into their car at all—yet we know that we have more of these injuries than any other European jurisdiction notwithstanding the considerable improvement in standards of road safety in this country and the adoption of neck restraints and the like. All this costs motorists and consumers a great deal, and the cost of premiums falls particularly harshly on those who live in rural communities and have to drive cars and on the young, who may find it difficult or impossible to pay premiums.

Insurance Industry: Whiplash

Debate between Lord Hunt of Wirral and Lord Faulks

Tuesday 1st March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

The noble Lord, with his experience as a neurologist, highlights the complicated nature of this injury and the fact that it is not usually detectable on scans. He also made the point about pre-existing degenerative injury. The effort to achieve some sort of consensus among medical experts has been helped by the MedCo portal. It is remarkable how many of the reports now have a more favourable prognosis than used to be the case before it was introduced.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

I declare my interests as set out in the register. Will my noble friend the Minister accept that there is serious concern not only in this House but also in the insurance industry at the way in which we have allowed a situation where 80% of all personal injury claims are said to be whiplash claims? Will he find some way of stopping these cold calls? One of my colleagues just had a cold call from a claims management company calling itself the “Department of Compensation”. Will my noble friend please get across to everyone that these people are potentially committing a very serious criminal offence?

[Lord Faulks]

My noble friend is, of course, absolutely right. The Government are determined to stamp down on this. Legislation is already in place, primarily enforced by the Information Commissioner’s Office. The Government have recently consulted on bringing forward secondary legislation to require all direct marketing callers to provide their calling line identification. Individuals can have a Telephone Preference Service installed on their telephones and we are also exploring the possibility of call-blocking devices for vulnerable consumers.

When somebody rings me, as they do from time to time, inviting me to take part in a fraud, I endeavour to extract details from them without revealing the position I hold. Unfortunately, my voice appears to cause them only to put down the phone.

Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill

Debate between Lord Hunt of Wirral and Lord Faulks

Tuesday 18th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

I understand my noble friend Lord Hodgson’s slight surprise. It was a late, though perfectly legitimate, move. Until recently, a number of us thought that whether the clause should stand part was to be debated with the amendment. As it is, we are debating one amendment, Amendment 4 in the name of my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral, which would build on Clause 2 by requiring courts to consider certain factors about the nature of an organisation’s activities when determining whether it had been negligent or in breach of a relevant statutory duty. Where the organisation concerned was a voluntary organisation, the courts would have to consider what resources were available to it; whether there were competing demands on those resources; the level of training that volunteers could be expected to undertake; and how similar organisations would have provided those resources. Where the organisation was state-funded, the court would again have to consider what resources were available to it and whether there were any competing demands on funding. It would also have to consider whether there were specific reasons why funding had been allocated in a certain way and how similar state-funded organisations manage similar activities.

My noble friend was instrumental in tabling amendments to the Compensation Act 2006 during its passage through Parliament and those very much helped to improve the legislation. I am grateful for his constructive suggestions during today’s debate. In this difficult area, it is useful sometimes to think differently from the traditional way in which we have approached claims of this sort. Normally, a judge simply ignores the resources of the defendant as not being relevant. The question is whether there has been a breach of whatever duty of care is impugned by the claim. Many people believe it is relevant, as a matter of justice, to think beyond that. However, the Government do not believe that this amendment is appropriate. As I have explained, the Bill will require the court to consider certain factors to do with the context of a person’s actions before reaching a decision on liability. The Bill does not change the general way in which the courts consider claims of negligence or for breach of statutory duty. They will continue to judge a person’s conduct against that of the ordinary and reasonable man. There are a range of factors that the court already considers in determining whether reasonable care has been taken in a particular case. For example, it looks at the nature of the activity in question and the degree of care required; the gravity of the harm which might be suffered if insufficient care were taken; and the cost of mitigating any risk.

We have not attempted to set out these matters in the Bill; nor do we intend to do so. Such an exercise would add unnecessary length and complexity to what is a clear and—even its critics would accept—concise Bill.

Some noble Lords have already expressed reservations that the current Bill fetters the discretion of the courts by requiring them to consider certain factors about the context of the defendant’s actions. As I have already explained, the Bill does not purport to tell courts how much weight to put on each factor, covered by Clauses 2 to 4, or to prevent them finding negligence where the circumstances of the case warrant it. However, the effect of being too prescriptive—for example, about the type of evidence the courts need to look at when determining whether an organisation was negligent—could introduce new burdens, which we think, on balance, would not be desirable. That being the case, while renewing my tribute to my noble friend’s attempt to add constructive suggestions to the Bill and his insight into this particular area, I respectfully ask him to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Hodgson for his support. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that I should like to return to this subject again at a later stage. In the mean time, if he could reflect on the case of Wilkinson v City of York Council, he would understand that I am not seeking to achieve what he described. I seek merely to respond to the words of the Court of Appeal in that case. I will not go into too much detail, but he will see what I mean if I quote just one sentence:

“A judge, it seems to me, should be slow to reject the evidence given by a responsible council official that resources did not permit a more frequent inspection than that which was given”.

The conclusion in that case was that, whereas the question of manpower resources was able to be considered in relation to other sections in the Highways Act, the particular section—Section 58—did not make reference to this shortage of resources as a factor to be taken into account. Therefore, the Court of Appeal concluded that Parliament had not wanted it to be a relevant factor. I therefore hope that the noble Lord will see that I am seeking to meet a particular problem in a specific way.

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Hunt of Wirral and Lord Faulks

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

My Lords, I am grateful once again to my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral for raising this issue in Committee. During that debate, I indicated that we would consider his amendment further. There has been widespread support for the ban on offering inducements to bring personal injury claims in Clauses 50 to 52, but I am concerned to make this as effective as possible. Having reflected over the summer—I have been given a great deal on which to reflect over the course of the Bill—I agree with my noble friend that we should seek to prevent regulated persons avoiding the ban by offering an inducement through third parties.

The noble Lord’s amendment was prompted by a concern that it is now increasingly common for solicitors to operate as part of larger groups of companies, or to have subsidiary or linked companies offering services alongside them. Those subsidiary or linked companies are not always regulated, and it would be relatively easy for, say, a solicitor simply to route an inducement through an unregulated company, thus avoiding the ban.

For the avoidance of doubt, I add that we do not wish to regulate third parties, only to prevent regulated persons from avoiding the ban by offering an inducement via an unregulated subsidiary or a linked business or individual. I believe that this amendment is a proportionate means of making the necessary ban on inducements more effective, and I beg to move.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral]

I am very grateful to my noble friend the Minister.