Civil Liability Bill [HL]

Lord Fowler Excerpts

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

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 1, I declare my interests as set out in the register of the House, in particular those in the insurance industry. I am going to speak briefly to three propositions. First, a definition of “whiplash” should appear on the face of the Bill. Secondly, that definition should be wide. Thirdly, it should be amendable without having to resort to primary legislation, but with parliamentary oversight.

I turn to the first of those propositions. My work has been made much easier by the 22nd report of the excellent Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. The committee is excellent as well as the report. It says at paragraph 9:

“We take the view that it would be an inappropriate delegation of power for ‘whiplash injury’, a concept central to a full understanding of the Bill, to be defined in regulations made by Ministers rather than being defined on the face of the Bill”.


I very much agree. It is particularly curious to me that there is no definition, because there are so many definitions of whiplash floating around, not least in the pre-action protocol for low-value personal injury claims for motor accidents and indeed in the draft regulations that appeared within the last 48 hours for this Bill. I therefore can see no reason why there should not be a definition on the face of the Bill. I am looking forward to hearing from the Minister whether he might see that one was, in fact, appropriate.

There are two problems with the width issue. The first is that, if the width is narrow—and a whiplash motor accident normally involves several minor injuries to the person involved—we are in the position where a tariff applies to a selection of injuries but maybe not all of them. That would be to the advantage of what I call the claims industry. Aviva, in its briefing to all Peers before the Second Reading, estimates out of whiplash alone to make £500 million a year. It is unbelievably inventive and supple. This morning, I was looking at one of the principal websites, and I will read a bit from it out as it will show just how much the meaning of the word “whiplash” has been stretched:

“Symptoms can include dizziness, blurred vision, disorientation, tiredness, poor concentration, memory loss, nausea, pins and needles in the arms and hands, muscle spasms and pain in the lower back”.


Later on, there is a rather curious sentence:

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


That is the sort of entity that, in fact, is doing great damage to the general population. It has increased motor insurance premiums. They are highly intelligent and well funded. I really feel width is important.

There is a second point on width. For the honest claimant, having clarity—so there is one tariff for one sum of money, and so they can fill in the online portals for a claim—is greatly to their advantage. If they have to fill in one online portal to sort out part of their heads of claims, and then no doubt head off to the one of the companies I was referring to, there would be greater chaos and we will not have tried, through legislation, to improve society.

I turn quickly to the point about the importance of it all being amendable. I regret that we will always be playing catch-up with the claims industry. This is not the first attempt to cope with the burgeoning whiplash problem. I remind the House that, even today, 1% of the population every year has a successful whiplash claim, on average—that is 30 times what happens in France. It is a problem that is out of control; we heard many examples of that at Second Reading. There is an enormous prize in having flexibility and, accordingly, I beg to move.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)]

My Lords, I should inform the Committee that if Amendment 1 is agreed to, I will be unable to call Amendments 3 to 5 by reason of pre-emption.