Prisons and Courts Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Suella Braverman and Chris Philp

Committee Debate: 2nd Sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 28th March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Suella Fernandes]

Q Does Mr Dixon wish to comment?

Brett Dixon: Yes, I would—thank you.

In some respects, the debate has moved on from fraud and low-velocity impact. That is because of the provisions that were enacted in relation to fundamental dishonesty, which are in the civil procedure rules at rule 44.16 and in section 57 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015.

If a defendant thinks that there is fundamental dishonesty involved in a claim, they have two opportunities to challenge it. They can challenge it at the conclusion of a case, when the case is unsuccessful, and then seek their costs. They can also challenge a case if it is successful but there is a question mark over what has been claimed, and that can lead to a claimant losing all of their damages and to a cost order as well. There are sufficient drivers in the system and levers that can be pulled to discourage any type of claim like that.

It is important, though, to understand this in context. First, the most important thing is to consider proven fraud. I see in practice, from different members of our organisation, many allegations of fraud or fundamental dishonesty that are not made out when tested by the court. You only need to look at a recent Court of Appeal decision by Lord Justice Briggs in Qader & Ors v. Esure Services Limited to see that there is a developing gaming of the system by insurers to prevent people from being able to challenge those cases properly. That case was about trying to prevent a claimant from having access to the same tools to fight the allegations as a defendant has to bring them.

There was an implicit recognition from the Court of Appeal in that judgment that it is important that a person who is accused of something like that has the ability and resources to answer it. It is a serious issue for somebody accused of it and it is about what is proven fraud, rather than vague statistics of about 70,000 cases, where we are not quite sure whether it is fraud, detected fraud or suspicion of fraud and what standard that is at. It is for the judiciary to decide if that is an issue and, if it is found to be an issue, that person should be dealt with. Equally, if you are going to have access to justice and equal rights on a level playing field, they need the ability to challenge it in appropriate circumstances.

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

Q Welcome to our panellists this afternoon. About three years ago, my wife and I were involved in a relatively minor road traffic accident. For the year that followed that, I was phoned up on my mobile almost every week by people talking about the accident and trying to make me submit a claim for a neck injury. No matter how many times I told them that neither I nor my family had suffered any injury, they persisted in trying to incite me to commit fraud. Mr Townend, why were they doing that?

Rob Townend: I spoke a bit about it earlier: it is encouraging you to make a claim so they can access the cash. The referral fee ban that was put in LASPO obviously is not working. There are marketing fees available for people to attract you to make a claim. I agree with Mr Dixon and his earlier comment about regulation of claims management companies. Insurers and lawyers are heavily regulated; I would still like to see more regulation of the legal fraternity by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The regulation around CMCs has been pushed back, I understand, to 2019. The referral fee ban has not worked. There is too much money still in the system and they will keep pestering. We know that. We have got a lot of examples where vulnerable customers are being contacted repetitively, like you were, until they make a claim.