Civil Liability Bill [HL]

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard continued): House of Lords
Thursday 10th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks (Con)]

The amendment tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Sharkey and Lord Marks, seems at least to question the underlying premise behind these reforms. I respectfully suggest that the Government have established the premise. The Minister set out the Government’s case, as it were, at Second Reading, and the statistics seem to lead ineluctably to the conclusion that there is widespread abuse of the whole whiplash claims system. The solution, though it is inevitably somewhat rough and ready, is that there should in effect be a reduction in what claimants might have been able to claim under the system that currently obtains, although that is in relation only to damages for pain, suffering and loss of amenity and excludes loss of earnings or any other consequential losses. It is a reduction but a fairly modest one and we are speaking of injuries at the lower end of the scale, although I do not downplay the discomfort that can follow from whiplash injuries. However, the purpose behind the reforms is surely, first, to provide certainty and, secondly, to make the awards reasonably modest so as to provide less of an incentive for those who would seek to make fraudulent claims. That, combined with the ban on medical officers, should fulfil what is, as the noble and learned Lord rightly says, essentially a policy decision.

In effect, the losers about whom we should be concerned are those genuine claimants, as opposed to the many who are not genuine, who I accept will get a lesser sum than they would otherwise have obtained. In the round, though, I suggest that this is a sensible policy decision. The House may have in mind that when these reforms were initially trailed by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne—and it came from the Treasury rather than the Ministry of Justice—the suggestion was that there would be no damages at all for whiplash injuries. This is a modification of that change, and of course there is the right of the judges to have an uplift in circumstances that we may be exploring later. Still, I suggest that it would be a mistake to pass these matters back to the judges. The Judicial College guidelines are in fact an extrapolation from individual cases decided by judges. They then, as it were, create a form of certainty, although they are variable according to individual cases.

I think the Government have made a case. They have to grasp the nettle, and they have done so in this case.

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Sharkey and Lord Marks, for framing a good debate in this important area, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, for his very clear opening remarks. There seem to be three issues here: first, who should set the tariff; secondly, where it should be set out; and, thirdly, how it should be amended.

I regard the tariff as being very much a political matter. The problem that we are trying to cope with is a widespread low-level fraud that is afflicting our country. It is easy money offered by the claims industry for people following what are probably genuine motor accidents. I read out earlier a quite shocking quote from one of the leading people in the claims industry:

“Even if you don’t experience any symptoms straightaway, don’t rule out the possibility that you’ve suffered this type of injury”.


I feel that as it is a political and social problem it must have a political solution, and it cannot really have a judicial solution.

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, who has lent me his copy of the Judicial College guidelines. The introduction states:

“Assessing the appropriate level of any award remains the prerogative of the courts, which are not constrained by any range identified in this book, since the figures within any such range are persuasive, not obligatory, and merely represent what other judges have been awarding for similar injuries”.


Therefore, the whole basis on which the Judicial College has been gathering figures and making judgments is not the sort of basis on which in any event one would want to build a tariff construction. It is the wrong starting material, although it is an interesting book. Accordingly, I feel that the Lord Chancellor must be the person who takes a decision about what will be contained in the tariff.

In respect of my other two questions, I return to the 22nd Report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which considered this issue at paragraph 13 and stated:

“In our view it would be an inappropriate delegation of power for damages for whiplash injury to be set in a tariff made by Ministerial regulations rather than on the face of the Bill. The tariff should be set out on the face of the Bill, albeit amendable by affirmative statutory instrument”.


I feel that answers both my questions. I urge the Minister to consider having a tariff on the face of the Bill and to ensure that it is amendable with suitable parliamentary oversight.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, the amendments are, as has been said, in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Sharkey. I shall first add to the point made about the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee by quoting what it said about placing the tariff in the Bill. It said that the second central question—the first being the question that I quoted earlier about what is meant by whiplash injury—is:

“By how much are awards of damages to be reduced?”


The committee said that the Government’s answer was that:

“The reduction in damages will be whatever the Lord Chancellor says it will be, in regulations to be made by him or her at some future date”.


The committee came to the conclusion, as the noble Earl pointed out, that that is an inappropriate delegation of power. I again make the point that it is appropriate for the Government to accept that recommendation. That has always been the way that that committee’s recommendations have been dealt with. Of course, amendment in the future can be made by statutory instrument.

I turn to the important point that was made in different ways by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, which is that the cost paid by society for these reforms in this particular case—that is, the reduction in damages—is a reduction in awards for genuine claimants. It is genuine claimants who are made to suffer. I cannot see the justification for that in any of the evidence that the Government have produced. We accept entirely that there is a problem with fraud. We are fully behind attempts to tackle fraud by eliminating, or at least reducing, fraudulent claims. But to remove the right to fair damages for claimants in these particular types of cases does not seem to be an appropriate response to this problem in a civilised society.

We address this central problem by saying that the Judicial College Guidelines are an appropriate way of coming to a conclusion on appropriate damages. They are a fair and workable way in which to achieve comparability. They avoid the problem that fraud may be positively encouraged by a cliff-edge system that encourages exaggeration. Damages under this proposal double if the claimant can persuade the medic who is preparing his report that an injury will have a duration of three months-plus, rather than just short of three months—doubled from £225 to £450. In that context, I make two points. The first is that it is a little odd that the response—

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Kinnoull]

My Lords, my own solution to the problem of the promise that the insurance industry has given is contained in Amendment 46. I am very grateful for the support and advice that the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, has given me in considering this problem. The promise made by the insurers—percentages are a dangerous game, as there is a question of whether you are counting numbers, premium volume or whatever; but in premium volume terms—represent 90% of the market. The promise says that,

“the signatories to this letter today publicly commit to passing on to customers cost benefits arising from Government action to tackle the extent of exaggerated low value personal injury claims”.

In considering how one should attack that problem, I ask myself two simple questions. First, does the person who accepts the data understand it? Having spent a lifetime in the insurance industry, I can say that claims presentations are phenomenally complicated. I will not even start to use some of the jargon. It is extremely complicated to know whether you are talking about an accident year or the date year, as it were, and to understand certain things such as how the claims coding works, loss triangles, reinsurance effects and so on. But a regulator is someone who can do that.

The second question I ask myself is: will the person who has it have a mechanism for ensuring compliance? Are they good policemen? That is why I have centred on the FCA. I have criticised the FCA in the past but I have never criticised its competence. I have only ever said that it has been heavy handed. It will certainly have people who understand the approximately 250 returns that come in from the participant companies that have motor insurance licences in Britain. We can see who they are on the Bank of England website, and they certainly have the power, not least under the regime of treating customers fairly, but they also have plenty of other soft power. The chief executives of insurers have to be approved, as does the chief risk officer. I seem to recall that even the chairman of our audit committee ended up having to be approved. An insurer cannot afford not to have a good relationship with the regulator, because the insurance industry is much more scared of the regulator getting annoyed than of the court. The regulator can move overnight and do something to your business, whereas a court will take a period of time to do that.

Accordingly, I advance my structure for solving the problem, which I think is proportionate. It would be possible for the FCA to report on it in some way—I had not really considered that part. I am asking for the trigger to be fired twice because, by the end of 2020, this legislation will either have been a terrific success, and we will be absolved of this particular problem with the claims industry, or it will have not been a great success; they will have found a way around it, so we would not need to have the report rolling on for ever. On that basis, I ask for my amendment and that of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, to be considered.

[Baroness Berridge]

I rise briefly to speak to the amendments I have in this group, which refer to a report by the FCA as well as a report being laid before Parliament.

It is important in this context to look back at Second Reading and the Government’s confession that the insurance industry had not done all it could to get on top of the issue of fraud. In some respects, on Second Reading one could have been forgiven for thinking that the problem of fraud was so great for the insurance companies that they were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy as it was such an urgent issue. Nothing could be further from the truth. A report from Direct Line Group, which is the largest insurance group that we have, shows profits for financial year 2017 of £610.9 million—a leap of 51.4% on 2016. Dividends were up 40.2%. In its interim report in 2017, one of the reasons it gave for that was fewer than expected bodily injury claims. We might argue for a long time about CRU figures, but Direct Line attributes its increase in profits to a decline in personal injury claims.

It is disappointing to those of us who are saddened and troubled by the effect on genuine claimants that there is no proper mechanism in the Bill to ensure that the £1 billion of savings from claimant payments will actually go to the motorists. The Government are saying that that is the Bill’s overall intention. In light of the scale of the fraud that the insurance industry would like us to believe, it is disappointing that it has not invested more of its resources into controlling this fraud because it is a societal issue that affects culture, as opposed to the profits that I have just outlined.

There is a particular legal problem, though, on which I hope the Minister can help us. Many insurance companies are no longer mutuals; they are listed on the stock exchange, with all its reporting requirements and requirements for directors to take into account their shareholders in the payment of dividends. How is that circle going to be squared? You have directors with an obligation to shareholders. They make cost-benefit savings, but they are under pressure either to pay down debt, as some have with some of their profits, or to pay out dividends rather than decrease the premiums they are charging to motorists.

There is a further issue with insurance companies, which is that they have enjoyed bumper savings from the implementation of the Jackson fixed-cost reductions and the LASPO changes that were introduced in April 2013. I am grateful to a fee earner from the Vale of Catmose—and to Thompsons Solicitors—who pointed out to me that insurers have saved at least £8 billion in claims costs between 2010 and 2016; the figure to date is around £11 billion. In spite of this, premiums have continued to increase relentlessly. She said the average premium has gone up from around £385 in the second quarter of 2013 to £493 in the last quarter of last year, according to the ABI’s own premium tracker—an increase of 28% since the LASPO changes.

There have been inordinate savings before that insurers have not passed on as reduced premiums. It may be as a result of being legal entities, as I have described, that they are under pressure from their shareholders to pay out bumper dividends instead of reducing premiums. There needs to be something more effective in the Bill to ensure that, after the Government introduce these changes, insurance companies will be held strictly to account and will pass on the savings they will undoubtedly make.

There is a laissez-faire attitude that, as half the market uses price-comparison websites, these savings will be passed on, but it does not always come to pass. It is ironic that, after the Second Reading of this Bill, we received the message that the Commons had passed the Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill for meters. That clearly shows that, in some circumstances, the market does not provide the savings to consumers that we envisage. The Government need to ensure that savings are passed on and there is a strict mechanism in the Bill to that effect.