Civil Liability Bill [HL]

Lord Cromwell Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 24th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, it is a tradition in this House to say what a privilege it is to follow the previous speaker. As the 15th speaker in this debate, I have to say that I have enjoyed and learned from all 14 speeches so far. It has been a real privilege to listen to this debate because it reflects the House of Lords at its best: terrifyingly well qualified; taking a roughly hewn Bill and making it even better, and I am sure that the Minister is extremely grateful for all the questions and advice that he is receiving. Well, all good things must come to an end.

I intend to speak on the personal injury discount rate, and in particular the panel that is being established to advise on it, about which I have some questions for the Minister. I wish first to make a general point. It is essential that in a Bill that combines whiplash claims, an area that is infamous for mischief, and the discount rate for personal injuries as a whole, we are not tempted into viewing all claims, or even most claims, as excessive or fraudulent, a point made powerfully by the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge. There are, of course, opportunistic claims and, in some cases, a collusive sub-industry seeks to profit from them, but there are also many injury claims that reflect tragic and agonising circumstances for individuals and their families. It may be that it is too easy for false claims to be effective, but that is wholly separate from determining the value of compensation claims that are found to be genuine and on which the discount rate has a profound effect.

In swinging the pendulum away from apparently excessive claims, we must not allow it to travel so far that it treats genuine claims unfairly or distorts their real value. As the Justice Select Committee reported,

“it may be simply increasing levels of under-compensation for claimants who were already under-compensated”.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, also touched on the difficulty for a claimant who, in a depressed market, has to eat into capital and is thereby unable to recover their position later. We need to be mindful of such unintended consequences. As the Minister reminded us, there is a person behind every claim.

Turning to more specific matters in the Bill, relating to the changed approach to the discount, who are the winners and losers? The winners are those who save substantial sums through reduced payouts: the Government, the NHS and insurers. Some might say that this not a bad thing, particularly if the results in reduced premia are passed on—something that a number of speakers have touched on and expressed a certain amount of cynicism about. However, the losers are people whose lives may have been damaged or curtailed, who may be in lifelong pain and who have to make the payout last them to the end of their days. The winners win at the exact expense of the losers.

I invite the House to consider the question of the inequality of arms between the winners and the losers. The winners are large, well-organised, well-connected and articulate bodies with financial interests in the outcome; they are able to draw on a depth of expertise in the rather arcane world of predicting investment returns far into the future. Contrast that with the losers of the new arrangement. These are typically individuals who have suffered an injury. We cannot assume that they are well resourced, that they are acting collectively, that they are familiar with theories on investment returns or that they are erudite in subjects such as yield curves or risk profiles. I note that the Justice Select Committee report contained these words:

“We advise caution in considering evidence of claimants’ investment behaviour to set the discount rate. Investment by claimants in higher risk portfolios could indicate they are under-compensated and forced into higher-risk investments to generate sufficient return for their future living expenses”.


In the same report, the committee highlighted the inadequate evidence of real behaviour of people seeking to invest safely for their future—a future of uncertain duration, as pointed out by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, uncertain health and uncertain investment returns. The government response to that report accepted that the evidence is indeed limited.

In short, these people need protecting. I do not think that there is any disagreement about that. They are wholly dependent on the Lord Chancellor and the panel set up to determine the discount rate. I am concerned that both the panel and the Lord Chancellor have an incentive, perhaps even a temptation, to keep the discount rate just a shade higher than it should be—what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, referred to as a “tension” in the arrangement. I note that in the Ministry of Justice impact assessment, 45% of the 92 respondents favoured retaining a very low-risk approach, so I do not think that we are looking at unanimous support for the new approach to a higher discount rate.

In its equalities statement, the Ministry of Justice concludes:

“The proposals will therefore be likely to reduce the amount of compensation that claimants receive unless they can demonstrate that a different rate should apply”.


Does the Minister really think that a claimant will be able to persuade a court or the Lord Chancellor that a rate should be changed? Currently, I believe, courts can vary the rate but never do so. I look forward to him correcting me or confirming that.

My second question is: can the Minister tell the House how the powers of the Lord Chancellor are to be contained such that he or she is prevented from perhaps guiding or even overriding the panel, especially as the panel is chaired by the Government’s own actuary, and that person will have two votes out of a total of six?

Turning to the panel itself, it has five members, quorate when only four: the Government Actuary, another actuary, an economist, an investment manager and a person familiar with,

“consumer matters as relating to investments”.

Those are four very clearly technical roles, although getting an economist and an investment manager to give an unambivalent view or one consistent across their professions is always something of a challenge. Each of these four panel members will be aware of the background to their appointment—that rates have been too low and need to be increased. Any dissent from raising rates may be considered too soft-hearted or too pessimistic about future economic growth, which itself is often a matter of political perspective. In short, there may be subtle pressure to pitch the rate a bit higher. Only a small adjustment in the rate will save the winners many millions but could spell a lifetime of struggle and hardship for the losers.

That leaves one role, which, by contrast, sounds to me pretty vague. I note that they are the last person listed as a panel member, and it feels slightly as if they have been bolted on as an afterthought, but perhaps I should not read too much into that. It would appear that this person is almost expected to sign off on behalf of consumers—in other words, on behalf of those receiving these payments. That is going to have to be a person who is not only extremely robust in negotiation but also multi-skilled in the technical areas represented by those who outnumber them, in vote terms, five to one. Otherwise, they are likely to find themselves outgunned or simply overwhelmed by the views of the other committee members, to say nothing of having only a single vote. My third question to the Minister is: can he tell the House whether, and on what basis, he feels that the last panel member is sufficient to counteract an inherent tendency for the panel to adopt a perhaps marginally overoptimistic view of the economic future? I say again that even the smallest tweak upwards in the discount rate will have a very significant negative consequence for the claim.

My final question to the Minister is: can he look again at the composition of the panel and the roles of the panel members so that he can assure the House that there is a fair balance of representation, both numerically and in terms of firepower? So often it is possible, in seeking to right one wrong, unintentionally to create another. This Bill in large measure seeks to prevent false claims of overpayment, but we must not in the process end up with a system that could deprive of adequate compensation those who need and deserve it.