Whiplash Injury Regulations 2021

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Monday 26th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Naseby (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I support these regulations. The objectives are good and clear, although on reflection, perhaps it is a pity it has taken so long—four years—for action. It is good to see Her Majesty’s Government working closely with the ABI, and it in turn with its members, and it is good to hear that everyone is organised for when the portal goes live on 31 May. I like the linkage between the Treasury, the FCA and the industry to assess whether policyholders have benefited from any savings made by insurers as a result of the Act.

However, I am deeply concerned about minor injuries claims. There is the potential here for a huge challenge of quasi-bogus claims from claims management companies and claimant lawyers. I say that because we already have evidence from earlier debates about what is happening in relation to credit lending, particularly payday lending and the backlash against the home-collected-credit format that has been with us for well over 100 years. These claims management companies manufacture complaints and use social media marketing techniques to farm spurious claims in large—in fact, huge—volumes. They end up at the Financial Ombudsman Service, which finds itself facing this mass dumping of claims and has to produce what it calls “mass settlements”, which are then passed on in the cases that we have been debating elsewhere to the actual companies that are doing the lending. In this case, they will be dumped on the insurance companies. Can my noble friend therefore make sure that he is fully briefed on what has been happening in what is in effect an allied industry?