Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a partner in the global commercial law firm DAC Beachcroft and refer to my other interests in the register.

However, for the purpose of this short debate I add that I have just this morning returned from an expedition to Antarctica, where I must say my boundaries were severely tested. I found myself in the company of adventurers, and I have to tell the Minister that they greeted the Bill with enthusiasm. They took the view that we have achieved the wrong balance, with too much emphasis on health and safety, which, sadly, has led to the cancellation of a lot of trips similar to the one that I went on—I now hold an award and a certificate for following in the steps of Roald Amundsen. I did not go quite as far as he did, but I feel that I have seen the effect of taking risks on the development of one’s own personality and abilities. Younger people certainly benefit from those boundaries being tested. Therefore I bring to the Minister unbridled enthusiasm for the Bill and a slight questioning of why senior lawyers have found fault with it so much.

I speak from my own experience, having dealt with the Compensation Bill, which is generally accepted as a good Bill. At the time, it came under severe attack from some of the most senior lawyers in this House, who tried to explain that it did not add anything and that it should all be left to the judges. They asked why on earth we were repeating the judgment of the very senior noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott of Foscote, who set out the position very clearly indeed, which we repeated in Clause 1 of the Compensation Act 2006. But the general view is that that has done a great deal to calm people down and to stop the cancellation of a lot of adventure holidays.

Finally, I say to my noble friend the Minister how pleased I am that he has decided to delete the word “generally” and insert the word “predominantly”. I thought about all sorts of other words that could be used, as he may have guessed, but I think that the word “predominantly”—for someone to have to demonstrate “a predominantly responsible approach towards protecting the safety or other interests of others”—really clarifies the position brilliantly. I am very grateful to my noble friend for proposing that amendment today.

All that I will say to the other lawyers in the House, who are far more senior than I could ever aspire to be, although I have been in the same firm now for 50 years, is that I bow to their judgments—indeed, I have to observe them and listen to them on many occasions. However, I question for a moment whether it might not be more acceptable for the House to recognise that this Bill will do much to further the opportunities, particularly for younger people, to take the sort of risks that perhaps at my age I should never even have dreamt of, such as traversing the crevasses that I did over the weekend. I think that it did me a lot of good and will do them a lot of good, too.

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, I was anticipating that the Minister would now move his amendment, but perhaps in the circumstances it would be sensible if I spoke from the Opposition Front Bench.

The literary world is familiar with the concept of vanity publishing; this Bill is an example of its parliamentary equivalent, vanity legislation. Clause 3, with or without the government amendment, or that of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, is the only clause that even purports to effect a change in the law—and that, in the words of Shakespeare’s Richard III, whose subject Ministers, and this Minister in particular, have so frequently prayed in aid, in a manner so “lamely and unfashionable” as to make it worse, not better.

It is noteworthy that, time and again, as this essentially trivial measure has made its way through both Houses, Ministers have harped on the alleged need, in the words of the Minister at Report,

“to provide reassurance to ordinary, hard-working people who have adopted such an approach towards the safety or other interests of others during the course of an activity, that the courts will always take this into account in the event that something goes wrong and they are sued”.

In a remarkable non sequitur, the Minister went on to express the hope that,

“this will also give them greater confidence in standing up to those who try to bring opportunistic and speculative claims by showing them that the law is on their side”.—[Official Report, 15/12/14; col. 34.]

That is a reference to the dreaded compensation culture which apparently haunts the sleepless nights of Ministers, potential defendants and their insurers—and now, we understand, possibly penguins in the Antarctic—but whose actual existence is more imaginary, in terms of cases brought, than real.