"My hon. Friend is giving an eloquent defence but the logic of his position seems to be that we should not have a European convention on human rights or a Court, but rather a world convention. Is that his position?..." David Mowat - View Speech
"17. Whether he has made a comparative assessment of the number of claims for compensation for whiplash injuries in courts in (a) the UK, (b) France and (c) Germany...." David Mowat - View Speech
"The very high level of claims in the UK pushes up insurance premiums for ordinary people by hundreds of pounds a year. In Germany, two medical opinions are required before claims go forward. Are we considering introducing that here, and what other measures are we considering to sort out this …..." David Mowat - View Speech
"My hon. Friend is making good points about regulatory failure and the Ministry of Justice “kitemark”. A large part of this shoddy industry is in effect administered by solicitors, who are supposed to be regulated by the Law Society. The Government have given it particular powers, including monopoly powers, so …..." David Mowat - View Speech
"My hon. Friend makes the point that some regulation is better than none whatever, but I am not sure that that is true: if regulation is so weak and ineffective and the public think that responsible, professional people are acting in this shoddy way, I simply do not think that …..." David Mowat - View Speech
"I am listening very carefully to what the shadow Minister is saying about compensation culture. To pick one issue, we appear to have a massively bigger incidence of whiplash than other European countries. What is his position on that situation; why does it arise?..." David Mowat - View Speech
"We got into this discussion because of the point the shadow Minister was making about compensation culture. Of course nobody is minimising soft tissue injuries—that would be awful—but we seem to have five times as many of them as other countries in Europe. Surely that statistic should at least have …..." David Mowat - View Speech
"In terms of the hon. Gentleman’s brief from the personal injury lawyers, Germany also has built-up areas, and we would not necessarily expect the incidence in our country and other countries to be so massively different...." David Mowat - View Speech
"In this country, we now have 1,200 whiplash claims a day, which is about 30 times more than in France or Germany. The industry costs to the rest of us are £2 billion a year, resulting in many young people being unable to afford to insure their cars. What discussions …..." David Mowat - View Speech