Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill

Nick Hurd Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I can certainly give that assurance to my hon. Friend. I do not think he is right, but we will debate the Bill in Committee and I am sure that he will have the opportunity in Committee and on Report to take a more detailed look at the wording. If there are ways to improve the Bill, we are certainly not closed-minded in that regard, although I believe that the wording is necessary to clarify when clause 4 applies.

What the Bill does not do is tell the court what conclusion it should reach. It does not prevent a person from being found negligent if all the circumstances of the case warrant it. It is important to be clear that it does not prevent medics who negligently injure their patients or others or who perform public services in a negligent way from being held to account. It does not do that. Nor does it have any bearing on deliberate acts of ill-treatment or harm that are inflicted on others and that might amount to criminal offences. In those instances, there could, as now, be repercussions in the criminal courts as well as the civil ones. What it does, as I said at the start of my speech, is drive out spurious claims, deter health and safety jobsworths and help to reassure good, honest and well-meaning citizens that if they act responsibly, do something for the public good or intervene heroically in an emergency, the law will be on their side. Businesses should not be deterred from providing jobs and contributing to our economy by a fear of opportunist litigation and individuals should not be deterred from helping their fellow citizens by a fear that they will somehow put themselves at legal risk.

[Mr Nick Hurd (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

I support the Bill, because I think it sends a valuable message of reassurance to volunteers and charities. Having knocked around the sector for six years now, I know that there definitely is an issue with people being afraid of being sued. May I urge him to consider this in the wider context of what the Government are doing to support volunteering, and will he join me in celebrating the fact that volunteering has risen on our watch following five years of gentle decline?

[Chris Grayling]

I will certainly make that very clear. We value enormously the work done by volunteers. May I take this opportunity to pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his very good work with the voluntary sector, which rightly values the contribution he has made? He has undoubtedly been one of the principal architects of a more favourable environment for charities to operate within.

I believe that the Bill strikes a fair, proportionate and sensible balance that will provide a clear and valuable reassurance to counter the fears that are proving such a deterrent, putting people off volunteering, and that cause anxiety to small businesses, which worry that they might end up at the wrong end of litigation, while ensuring at the same time that those who are genuinely injured through negligence or who suffer wrongs are not prevented from obtaining redress where appropriate.

I believe that the Bill embeds common sense and will reassure all those people. I hope that the House will welcome the policy intentions that underpin it and I commend it to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sadiq Khan]

I am pleased that the Justice Secretary asks that question because the Ministry of Justice has confirmed that the number of civil cases is going down, not up. It would be worth his spending some time looking at his own statistics. He spent a great deal of time during his speech talking about all the progress that he has made in reducing the number of personal injury cases. Either his reforms are not working or the statistics from his Department are wrong. He must decide which it is.

During his 30-minute speech he gave us no hard facts, no proof and no evidence. We know he has previous when it comes to lack of evidence. We have seen the meltdown in probation that has come about because of his Government’s reckless and half-baked probation privatisation—all done, again, without any evidence, let alone testing or piloting; nothing to show it would work or would not risk public safety. The Justice Secretary said at the Dispatch Box that he trusted his instinct ahead of hard statistical evidence—the same instinct that brought us the Work programme and that delivered a prison crisis has now brought us SARAH.

The Justice Secretary tried to give the impression that there was a problem, and he referred to the impact assessment. I can imagine the fear in his officials’ eyes when they were told to go and find some evidence—any evidence—to support the aims of his Bill. But the Justice Secretary should have been worried when all they could come back with was a survey—a survey—from 2006-07, when the ink was not even dry on the Compensation Act 2006. How can he use as evidence a survey done when the 2006 legislation, which many people think deals adequately with the problems that he says he wants to solve, had barely come into force? In fact, there is plenty of evidence out there, as the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd) said, that contradicts the Government’s claim. A Cabinet Office report from 2013 shows not a fall but a rise in volunteering, confirmed also this week by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. Volunteering is going up, not down.

[Mr Hurd]

The right hon. Gentleman is entirely right, and both sides of the House should celebrate that. It is in part the result of significant Government interventions to remove barriers and reform Criminal Record Bureau checks, and to invest in the opportunities to volunteer, not least the National Citizen Service. This is another milestone on that journey of removing barriers. Yes, volunteering is rising, but still, 20% of volunteers do 80% of the giving. There is so much potential to do more, but far too many people are put off by the risk of being sued, and this Bill aims to create a greater sense of reassurance on that fundamental point.

[Sadiq Khan]

I am grateful for that intervention because it means that I can refer to the evidence on the barriers to volunteering. The biggest obstacle is a lack of spare time—60% of respondents said that this applied to them a lot and 23% said it applied little. Where does the Bill give people who want to volunteer more spare time? The second biggest reason given by the survey was bureaucracy. Where does the Bill deal with bureaucracy? Other barriers to people coming forward to volunteer include work commitments; looking after children or the home; looking after someone elderly or ill. The hon. Gentleman will know, if he is really honest, that this is a Bill without a cause. Fear of litigation is a very small factor—I think only 1% in the most recent survey referred to that.

[Mr Hurd]

Can we just be clear that the position of the Labour party is that all is well with the 2006 Act, and that there is not a significant issue in the voluntary sector about the risk of litigation and the concern about managing that risk?

[Sadiq Khan]

If the hon. Gentleman will be patient, I will come on to what the Justice Secretary should have done and pray in aid experts in that regard.

As I said, volunteering is going up, not down. If the health and safety culture is stifling volunteering, perhaps the Justice Secretary can explain the increase in volunteering. As I have said, there is no evidence to support the problem that he describes. There is no great health and safety beast suffocating the life out of those doing good deeds, petrified into inaction at the prospect of having to fork out compensation after being sued. Even if there was, the Bill provides no real substantive solutions anyway.