Public Disorder: Compensation

Lord Elystan-Morgan Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, the noble Baroness makes a valid point, and I pay tribute to the work that she did earlier on these matters. However, it is also important to look at the fact that those who were not insured were the sort of people who probably did not have adequate records about what they had in their shops—and I am thinking particularly of shops—and one therefore needs to conduct the loss-adjustment process very carefully. As she will know, people often make what one might describe as overgenerous claims when they do not have the appropriate records of what they had in their particular shop or business, and those things need to be looked at carefully. However, as I made clear in my response to my noble friend, it is important that we make sure that the police deal with these matters as quickly as possible. That is what we have been urging them to do and that is why we have set in motion a number of measures to speed up the process.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, can the Minister assure the House that in the review of the 1886 Act not only will great effort go into defining the categories of claimants and types of claim but anxious thought will be given to the most central and existential question of whether it should be police authorities that bear the full responsibility for such damages, bearing in mind that the society in which we now live differs very greatly from that of 1886?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, when I first answered this Question I was keen to emphasise that it was an 1886 Act. For that reason, the noble Lord is right to emphasise that we are in a very different world from 1886—it is now 125 years on from that date. All I can say about the review is that we will consider all options for reform. Perhaps I may give just one example. The 1886 Act, quite obviously, did not look at damage to motor vehicles, for the very simple reason that they did not exist in 1886.