Civil Liability Bill [Lords]

Ruth George Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Gloria De Piero]

Exactly. I do not think anybody in this House will want to shed a tear for those insurance companies whose profits are going up and up. In 2017, profits for Direct Line went up 52% to £570 million and Aviva recorded a profit of £1.6 billion—and I have not even talked about the packages that some insurance company bosses take home.

The Government appear to have rounded this figure up. We say base the figure on the advice and recommendations of countless experts and follow the evidence. Even if the hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) does not listen to me, I wish he would follow the evidence of the experts. New clause 1 does just that. It would increase the limit only by CPI since 1999 and limit any increase to £1,500. That way, injured people with significant injuries and potentially even more significant losses will get the representation they need and deserve.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that in the case of an accident at work it is even more important that an injured employee is able to get legal representation to take a case against their employer? The employer will be armed with lawyers and their employers’ liability insurance company. That is stacked up against an individual whose task will be hard enough. They will be feeling victimised enough as it is.

[Gloria De Piero]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is not an easy thing to take a case against your boss. You need a lawyer to hold your hand, an expert to talk you through, and the Government’s proposals are going to make that so much more difficult. She makes an appropriate point.

New clause 2 would ensure that children and protected persons, for example those lacking mental capacity, are treated the same as other vulnerable groups by excluding them from the small claims limit increase for whiplash injuries. Having made a welcome concession on Second Reading, and clarified in Committee that they would exclude vulnerable road users from the impact of the Bill and secondary measures on the small claims court limit, the Government appear to have forgotten others. Horse riders, pedestrians, motorcyclists and cyclists are rightly to be excluded from the changes, but some of the most vulnerable in our society, who are currently recognised by the courts as requiring special status, will be left, with everybody else, facing a new small claims limit of £2,000 or £5,000. As it stands, any settlement awarded to those who lack capacity to conduct their own proceedings, such as children or someone suffering with a mental disability, must be rubber-stamped by a judge because of the claimant’s recognised vulnerabilities. That will continue to be the case after these changes are introduced.

The law requires children and other protected people to have a litigation friend to conduct proceedings on their behalf. In the small claims court, those who provide this required representation are not and will not be paid for their time. Yet by increasing the small claims limit, there will be a significant increase in the number of people coming through the small claims court with higher-value and more complex cases, where they need a lawyer more than ever. We are asking a litigation friend to take on potentially complicated matters for those most in need, on their own, in their own time, for no pay. Injured horse riders, cyclists and pedestrians and motorcyclists will not be subject to a tariff. The small claims limit for them will remain at £1,000, meaning that they will get a lawyer to act for them for free in any case over that value.

Can the Government not see that children and protected persons need this support, too? How on earth can the Government justify protecting one vulnerable group but not another? Why is the horse rider worthy of exemption, but not a child or a person without the capacity to conduct proceedings? Are we really willing to let some of the most vulnerable people in our justice system be left simply to hope for the good will of others to protect their interests because we in this House have failed to do so?

I know that the Minister is aware of this issue from discussion in Committee with my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous). The Minister suggested returning to this point and that he would be very interested to see an amendment tabled. So here is his chance: a ready-made amendment that makes a simple correction and is an opportunity for the Government to rectify what I presume is an oversight. It simply extends the exemption already provided to others. It removes children from the changes being made to the small claims limit or tariff, and ensures that protected groups are excluded from the increase, the same as horse riders, cyclists and pedestrians. It removes the double standard of some vulnerable road users being granted an exemption and others not. Ultimately, it does little more than extend the protections already afforded to some and allow the Government to show that they care for all.

[Chris Philp]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for calling me so early in this debate. I rise to oppose the Opposition’s new clause 1, which seeks to prevent the Government or any other public body from increasing the small claims track limit in relation to these personal injury cases, particularly road traffic personal injury cases, above £1,500.

I strongly oppose the measure. I touched on one of the reasons for doing so in my intervention on the shadow Minister earlier. For the vast majority of general commercial claims and indeed personal claims, the small claims track limit is £10,000. The reason it is as high as £10,000 is that some level of materiality is applied to the claim in question. The view taken by Parliament in the past, rightly, is that matters below the £10,000 limit should be sufficiently simple for a small claims track procedure to be used without the involvement of often very expensive lawyers.

In response to my intervention, the shadow Minister, before she was distracted by another intervention, drew attention to the fact that these are personal injuries. I accept that point, of course. However, the fact of their being personal injuries is not germane, in my view, to the question, which is: is the matter sufficiently simple to be adjudicated via the small claims track rather than through lawyers? That is the question—not whether the matter is serious or not serious but whether the matter is sufficiently simple to be dealt with properly by the small claims track rather than through lawyers. That is why I think there is a strong a case, on the grounds of consistency, for a £10,000 rather than a £5,000 limit.

[Ruth George]

In road accident claims and particularly in employment liability cases at work, establishing who is to blame for an accident is far from simple. It is an extremely different sort of case from that of establishing whether a fridge was working or not when it was bought, or whether there is something wrong with a car. I really think the hon. Gentleman is not doing justice to the victims of personal injury accidents by the arguments that he seeks to make.

[Chris Philp]

Of course the £10,000 small claims track limit applies to a far wider range of issues than simply whether a fridge functions or not. The hon. Lady mentions as an example the question of culpability for a road traffic accident. Given that we are talking about much less serious types of injury if the limit is, say, £5,000, determining responsibility for that road traffic accident does not need to be an enormously complicated procedure. For those of us who have been involved in such road traffic accidents, the minor ones we are talking about here, determining responsibility is not a highly complicated matter. I accept that, in much more difficult cases where very serious injuries have been suffered, one must of course take a lot more legal care and attention. For very minor injuries, however, where by definition the accident is a minor one, I suggest that determining responsibility and culpability does not need to be an extremely complicated matter.

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[Chris Philp]

Once again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Not only has the number of claims for such injuries dramatically increased over the past 10 years, at a time when the number of road traffic accidents has fallen, but they are far more prevalent here than in other European jurisdictions—not just Greece but countries such as France and Germany. Could it be that British necks are weaker than French and German necks, or could it be that our system encourages fraudulent claims?

[Ruth George]

The hon. Gentleman, who is making an excellent speech, has answered his own question. He has talked about the prevalence of claims management companies and the way they are inciting people to make claims on an industrial scale. Surely those claims management companies, and the insurance companies they are linked to in most cases, should be bearing the brunt of this problem, not the innocent victims of accidents, as would be the case under the Bill.

[Chris Philp]

The hon. Lady evidently agrees that claims management companies have been inciting fraud on an industrial scale—a point of view that her Front-Bench colleague perhaps disagrees with. That said, claims management companies are only part of the problem. As I said, the incentives inherent in the system have encouraged the kind of behaviour I have been describing.

I want to come to the implied sedentary disagreement from the shadow Minister earlier. I inferred from his gesticulation that he disagreed with my suggestion that claims management companies were inciting fraud on an industrial scale. I will start with a personal anecdote, which I realise does not make the general point, but I will then come on to that more general point. My interest in this area stems from personal experience. About three or four years ago, just before being first elected, I had a minor road traffic accident while driving along the M5 to Cornwall with my wife and our two small children. [Interruption.] I think I am being heckled by the Chair of the Justice Committee.

Nobody was injured in the accident—the bumper was a bit dented, but that was it. It happened at low speed, the traffic having slowed down. For about a year, however, I was bombarded with calls to my personal mobile by people from claims management companies, I think, that had somehow found out about the bump, trying to persuade me that I or my family had suffered a neck injury. No matter how often or how insistently I told them that everyone was fine, they would say things such as, “If you just say your neck hurts, you’ll get £3,000.” The incitement to commit fraud was clear and direct. Subsequently, as recently as in the last two or three months, I have received repeated automated calls—robocalls—again to my mobile, although wholly unrelated, I think, to the first set of calls. I received a recorded message saying, “We are calling about your accident. Do you want to talk about it?” There was then a pause during which I was expected to reply. That is clearly happening on an industrial scale.

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[Chris Philp]

While I admire the hon. Gentleman’s patriotism in inviting us to follow the Scottish example, I am afraid that this Parliament will form its own view on what is appropriate, and I do not think that he can be in any doubt about what I think the right view is on the question before us today.

[Ruth George]

The hon. Gentleman is indeed being very generous. However, he constantly claims that the injuries sustained in road traffic accidents are minor. Written into the Bill is that an injury caused by the

“rupture of a…tendon or ligament in the neck, back or shoulder”

that lasts for up to two years will be included within the limits. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that sort of “minor injury”, which could affect people for such a large portion of their lives, should be included?

[Chris Philp]

The Government consulted extensively on the definitions before legislating. I understand that the definition to which the hon. Lady has referred was recommended by the Sentencing Council, and I would certainly not wish to second-guess or naysay the recommendation of such an august institution.

I did not quite have the opportunity to finish a point that I was making in response to the hon. Member for Leeds East who, some moments ago, was expressing disagreement with my suggestion that claims were being farmed on an industrial scale. I have given my own personal example, but I also want to submit to the House, in support of what I said, an example uncovered by The Sunday Times in July 2015. It involved a company called Complete Claim Solutions, which was based principally in Brighton but also had an office in the Borough of Croydon—although not in my constituency, I hasten to add. It was discovered to be systematically encouraging members of the public to submit fraudulent claims. It was such a disreputable organisation that it used the film “The Wolf of Wall Street” as an instructional video illustrating the kind of behaviour it considered appropriate. This is no small company; it was responsible for making no fewer than 7 million outbound calls per year. One of its salespeople, Tom Murray, was recorded boasting to a journalist from The Sunday Times that he was able to easily persuade the public to lie. He said that

“if they want that £2,000, they’ll lie.”

He also said:

“When it comes down to a woman who’s had an accident…I’ll make her cry”

as a way of persuading her to make a claim.

That is just one example of the shocking behaviour of these claims management companies, in this example one making 7 million calls per year.

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[Bim Afolami]

That is an interesting point. I have served on many Committees, as we all have, and some have huge amounts of engagement from lots of Members while others have less. But this House is not just this Chamber; it is also all the Committee Rooms. Negative statutory instruments provide a way for significant amounts of secondary legislation—I do not know how many pieces of legislation; probably hundreds—to go through Parliament. I cannot agree with the hon. Lady 100% that using that procedure will always result in a lack of democratic accountability, because frankly, in modern government, it plays a significant part in our governance process. I recognise the point she makes, however, and it is fair to say that sometimes people do not pay as much attention in Committees as they might do, but that is fundamentally the case for this Chamber, too.

[Ruth George]

Does the hon. Gentleman therefore agree that, on occasions, statutory instrument Committees do not provide a democratic procedure, as in the case of the cuts to criminal injuries compensation in 2012? At the time, one Committee completely overturned the Minister’s proposals and asked for them to be brought back. A separate Committee was then reconvened, made up of Parliamentary Private Secretaries, and it railroaded through exactly the same criminal injuries compensation cuts. This House should not be seeking to use that kind of procedure for something that is so important to hundreds of thousands of accident victims.

[Bim Afolami]

I do not want to leave the House, or the hon. Lady, with the impression that I believe that statutory instruments are undemocratic. They are democratic, and they are a form of how we do things in this House. I was unaware of the case that she mentioned. The broader point is that getting primary legislation through, particularly in a hung Parliament such as this, will always be difficult—[Interruption.] No, primary legislation is not always the place where we make every single change. That is why we have a Committee system.

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[Bim Afolami]

That is obviously factually accurate, but we need to ensure that we deal with the cause of these problems. As I have said, the Bill does not deal with everything, but it does deal with at least part of the problem. That, in and of itself, is a valuable thing.

[Ruth George]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the underlying cause that makes these changes necessary, as has the hon. Member for Croydon South. As they have both identified, that underlying cause is surely the fact that insurance companies should not be defending claims that could be fraudulent.

[Bim Afolami]

It is partly that, but the important point is that no single piece of legislation in this House can deal with every single problem. We can identify a particular problem and deal with it in a particular piece of legislation.

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[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

I rise to support the Bill and speak against new clauses 1 and 2 because, whether through ending rip-off energy bills, freezing fuel duty or increasing the personal allowance for income tax, the Government’s constant focus has been to make sure that the consumer is at the heart of their work and to reduce the cost of living for millions of people.

I am therefore pleased that Ministers have identified another area in which the cost of living is artificially and unfairly inflated. At a time when our cars and roads are safer than ever, one would expect the price of motor insurance to come down. Instead, the opposite has happened. Since 2010, there has been an almost 50% increase in the cost of comprehensive insurance premiums, and a near 80% increase in the cost of third-party fire and theft insurance premiums.

[Ruth George]

Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that the rise in the cost of insurance is, as we have heard in the debate, down to insurance companies not tackling possibly fraudulent claims, thereby creating the problem and making huge additional profits? Does he accept that consumers are also victims of accidents and will be severely affected by the Bill?

[Mr Clarke]

The hon. Lady is right to say that insurance companies have a duty to tackle fraudulent claims—that is certainly the message that the Government would send out and that I endorse—but the proportion of such claims is relatively small. We need to get the incentives in the system right so that the most serious cases receive the compensation and the attention that they deserve in the legal system and that the less serious cases receive a proportionate response. Whiplash is a horrible injury, which can be very severe, but we must ensure that the incentives in the system are not so skewed as to push all cases into the most extreme bracket. That simply does not reflect the nature of the injuries that are being suffered and it is not in the country’s public policy interest to have insurance rendered hugely more expensive, which the current system does.

[Ruth George]

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the tariff for compensation for injuries, which judges currently use, is unfair and overcompensates people with more minor injuries? It covers a range of injuries, not just whiplash.

[Mr Clarke]

I am saying that there is a need for a proportionate system for compensation. The number of road traffic accident-related personal injury claims has increased by 200,000 since 2006—a rise of approximately 40%. That suggests to me that the incentives in the system are skewed. Insurers predict that, without reform, motor premiums could continue to rise at a rate of about 10% annually. That constitutes a significant burden on the cost of living for millions of us who are dependent on our cars for daily travel, especially in rural communities.

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[Bambos Charalambous]

I support new clause 2, which is in my name and in the name of other hon. Members. I am concerned that the Bill takes away the protection for children and protected parties such as people with a mental capacity disability.

Under the current civil procedure rules, children and protected parties are required to have legal representation in court when there is a settlement following a civil claim. Children and protected parties are not excluded from the Bill as vulnerable road users. Prior to introducing the Bill, the Government gave exemptions to a small category of vulnerable road users, including cyclists and horse riders, but no such exemption was given to children or protected parties despite their being protected under rule 21 of the civil procedure rules.

The Government should exempt children and protected parties in accordance with rule 21, and the Minister’s own Department, the Ministry of Justice, is responsible for setting these rules. I raised this issue with him when the Bill was in Committee and, being a man of his word, he duly got back to me, but his response was disappointing. Part 21 of the civil procedure rules states that for a child or protected party settlement to be made it has to be with the approval of the court. The settlement has to go before a court; there is no issue of it going to a portal. For court approval, children and protected parties need legal representation.

The Minister’s response to me suggested that the insurance industry would provide legal representation and that this would solve the problem. Except there would be a clear conflict of interest if the same party were paying for the legal representation of both sides. When choosing a litigation friend for a child or protected party, one of the criteria, under paragraph 3.3 of practice direction 21, is that the party seeking to represent the child or protected party as a litigation friend should have

“no interest adverse to that of the child or protected party”.

Clearly someone who is being paid by the insurance industry against the child’s claim cannot say that they have no adverse interest.

Sometimes children will be suing their parents in a road traffic accident personal injury case, meaning that the parents will have an adverse interest and cannot act for or represent their children. By not excluding children and protected parties from this Bill, the Minister is making a mockery of the current rules that govern personal injury in England and Wales.

Why should a child be able to access legal representation in a case where they have been injured at, say, an amusement park but not when they suffer the same injuries in a road accident? As things stand, the child or protected party would still have to get a legal opinion before the court makes a settlement, but the cost of the advice would not be recoverable from the negligent defendant, or their insurer, in cases subject to the small claims tariff. Why does the Minister want to take money away from children and protected parties in order to benefit insurers?

There are complexities in these cases, and legal representation is needed more than ever in matters involving children and protected parties. I cannot understand the Government’s logic or rationale in excluding horse riders and cyclists from this Bill but not children or protected parties. Are they saying that injuries suffered by children and protected parties through no fault of their own should be treated less seriously than injuries suffered by cyclists or horse riders? This goes to the heart of the Bill, which is ill-conceived and drafted solely from the point of view of the insurance industry and not of innocent victims who make a claim.

It is shameful that the Government are willing to sacrifice the interests of innocent injured children, and to take away the protection they currently have, enshrined in law, to give the multi-billion pound insurance industry an even bigger advantage in court.

[Ruth George]

I rise to speak to amendment 1. This Bill was drafted at the behest of the insurance industry, as is clear from every speech in favour of it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I think the hon. Lady is speaking to new clause 1, rather than amendment 1. We would not want people to be confused.

[Ruth George]

I beg your pardon, Madam Deputy Speaker.

New clause 1 would amend some of the worst failings of the Bill, which has been drafted at the behest of the insurance industry over several years. The industry has failed to tackle fraudulent claims. We have heard from hon. Members on both sides of the House this afternoon that the industry, which is responsible for so many of the claims management companies and for passing information on to them, is producing the problems that the Government are now seeking to address by further victimising the victims of accidents.

The insurance industry is making billions of pounds of profit and will make a further £1.3 billion from this Bill through the reduction in claims. Victims of accidents are not the people who tend to go to court. Those who lose will be denied access to justice, as both the impact assessment and the excellent report from the Justice Committee make clear.

It is a huge undertaking for a layperson to take a case to court. Most would not even dream of it, especially a case against their employer, who will be armed with their own lawyers and often with an insurance company, which will also be armed with its own lawyers. Unison, the public sector union, surveyed its members 60% and said they would not have taken a case against their employer to get the compensation they deserved for their injury at work if they had to take the case on their own without the support of a lawyer.

It is extremely difficult to determine liability in the case of many accidents at work, especially in instances like those I saw when I worked for the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers. Deliveries are made to stores by a third party and there are incidents in warehouses that may be the fault of one party, the fault of another company or the fault of the employee. Those arguments are exceedingly difficult to pin down, especially for an individual claimant, and they require the assistance of a lawyer.

The Government assure us there will be an easy online portal for claimants to register a claim. I am sorry, but I am a member of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions and we were told that there would be an online portal for universal credit, yet 47% of claimants are unable to access the portal. An online portal is, of itself, not an easy thing to access, particularly for people for whom IT is not their natural sphere. I ask the Minister to commit the Government not to roll out these changes to the small claims limit until the portal has been demonstrated to be easily usable by at least 95% of those who seek to use it. I hope that that commitment will be made during the passage of this Bill because, as we have heard, the portal is nowhere near ready and even the pilots have been found by firms of lawyers to be difficult to access.

The arguments made in favour of the Bill have been about the cost of insurance but, as we have heard, that cost has been rising at the same time as insurance companies’ profits have been rising. It is not the cost of personal injury claims that has increased insurance; those bodily injury claims have actually reduced by £850 million since 2013. A large degree of the cost rises has been due to the costs of vehicle damage, which have become far higher in the last five years—nearly £700 a year more—because cars are more complicated.

The Bill has been introduced, it is claimed, to crack down on whiplash claims, but it covers far more than simply whiplash. The definition of whiplash itself has been extended far beyond a medical definition, to include all injuries to necks and backs that relate to rupture or strain of muscles, tendons or ligaments lasting up to two years. I hope that no one on either side of the House would feel that such injuries are minor. The Bill also deals with accidents at work, public liability claims and medical negligence. USDAW has estimated that five times as many cases would be caught by this small claims limit as are caught currently. According to the TUC, only one in seven workers make a claim against their employer for an accident at work. So we can see that this move will have a severe impact on the number of claims being made.

[Jo Stevens]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill will make workplaces more dangerous? I know from experience that, if employers are litigated against as a result of accidents in the workplace, they review their safety policies and make workplaces safer. This Bill will have the opposite effect.

[Ruth George]

I absolutely concur with my hon. Friend’s point, which I raised with the Health and Safety Executive, whose laboratory is in my constituency. It concurred that one of its major concerns is that without claims being made against employers they will cease to militate against risk in the workplace. That is just one of the many problems the Bill will cause, both for victims of accidents and for all other employees in the workplace.

The Minister has heard many examples this afternoon of how the Government could crack down on fraud and on the costs of insurance without cracking down on innocent victims of accidents. The requirement in the Bill for medical reports prior to offers being made is an important one, which all sides are supporting. We hope that the Government would seek to assess the impact of that change before impacting on victims. We have also heard many calls from Members on both sides of the House for claims management companies to be acted against because they are obviously playing the system and we need to make sure that that cannot continue.

This Bill is seeking to make the innocent victims of accidents pay for the fact that insurance companies are not prepared to crack down on fraud and so have come to this Government seeking their help. We have no guarantee that insurance costs will fall, but we do know that insurance companies will make £1.3 billion more a year out of this legislation and that innocent victims of accidents will suffer. I very much hope that the Minister has listened to the arguments being made on both sides of the House today and will accept the new clause.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

Let me begin by paying tribute to the high quality of debate today from hon. and right hon. Members on all sides of the House. This has been a serious business. The consultation on the issue began in 2012 and the detailed measures we are debating today were announced in the Budget in autumn 2015. There are disagreements on every side of the House, which are expressed in new clauses 1 and 2, but, more generally, I hope that everybody in the House will recognise that the Bill has been adapted as we have listened a great deal to suggestions made by the Opposition and others. I pay tribute to the hon. and right hon. Members on all sides who pushed for the changes we have introduced on vulnerable road users, on the new role of the consultation with the Lord Chief Justice and on definitions, particularly in respect of whiplash. I also pay tribute to what happened in the other House, where this legislation was considerably revised and improved by efforts from Cross-Bench peers, as well as Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative peers.

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[Rory Stewart]

This is an issue on which my hon. Friend has been very thoughtful in his role as Chair of the Justice Committee. There are obviously three things that we are endeavouring to do and we are open to more ideas. One of them, of course, is that, through this package of measures, we disincentivise claims management companies from having a significant financial interest in pursuing this type of case. The second, as my hon. Friend pointed out, is the setting up of an online portal to reassure individuals that they will have a more predictable, more transparent and more straightforward system for pursuing their claims in person. Finally, through consultation with the judiciary, we are looking at the issue of paid McKenzie friends. We are waiting for the judiciary to report back so that we can take action on that issue.

[Ruth George]

The Minister claimed that raising the limit for workplace accidents to £2,000 would allay my fears, but given that USDAW and other unions have said that this will actually increase the numbers needing to go to the small claims court by five times, it certainly does not. There are still wide concerns around taking cases against employers, as he will know. Will he make any assurance that the portal will be tested, and that it will be ensured that an ordinary layperson can use it before any claims are implemented?

[Rory Stewart]

Clearly two different cases are being made here. On the question of the online portal, a very serious group of people, which includes insurers and lawyers, is testing it. One of the concessions that was made in the House of Lords—I think it is a good one—is to extend the time before this is rolled out by 12 months so that we have more time to make sure that the testing is done and that the portal operates properly. That is a good challenge.

The point about injuries in the workplace is that that, I am afraid, is outside the scope of the Bill, which is very narrowly defined to deal with whiplash injuries. Indeed, new clause 1 is also very narrowly defined as it deals with only the question of a “relevant injury”, which, in this case, is a whiplash injury. Therefore, while arguments about other forms of injury and employment are very interesting, they are not relevant to the debate on new clauses 1 or 2.

Moving on to the next question about simplicity and inflation, I just wish to point out that the previous Labour Government accepted the principle that inflation was not the only determinant of the levels that the small claims court should meet, because, of course, the small claims limit was raised from £1,000 in 1991 to £3,000 in 1996, and then to £5,000 in 1999 under the Labour Government before it was raised to £10,000 in 2013. Quite clearly those rises were well in advance of inflation and were driven, as indeed was the case for European small claims, by the notion of the simplicity of claims, not a change in either the CPI or the RPI.

Even if one were to accept that there should be a relationship to inflation, the mechanism proposed in new clause 1 seems to be a recipe for falling behind inflation. In effect, the proposal is that an increase should only take place if there had been a rise of at least £500, and should then be limited to £500. It would not take many years of slightly higher inflation than we have now to end up in a situation where, over a five and 10-year period, the increase would be considerably in excess of £1,000, which would then allow for a rise, but we would then find a syncopated system that, very rapidly, would be falling behind inflation.

The more fundamental point is a constitutional one. This is not an issue that is traditionally dealt with through primary legislation, and it is not an issue that is dealt with in the Bill. That is because increases to the small claims limit are properly an issue for the Civil Procedure Rules Committee, on which the Master of the Rolls, district judges, senior judges, personal injury lawyers—barristers and solicitors, including the president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers—and representatives for consumer bodies such as Which? sit. That is a better way of looking at the proper limits than trying take forward primary legislation on the Floor of the House. Technically, there is also another issue with the new clause, which is that subsection (4) should include paragraphs (a), (b) and (c).

That brings me to new clause 2. The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) quite rightly drew our attention to potentially vulnerable litigants, such as infants, children and other protected parties. He argues—on this we absolutely agree—that they suffer the same forms of injuries as any other human, and are entitled to fair compensation and the same degree of representation that would be afforded to any adult. At the moment, that is, of course, provided by the allocation of a litigation partner by the judge concerned.

The hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Ashfield asked what happens if that does not work and whether an increase in the number of cases would undermine that system. We have looked at this carefully, because the hon. Gentleman raised the matter in Committee. Our conclusion, having consulted a wide range of individuals, is that we do not believe that that would occur, but a number of safeguards are in place in the worst-case scenario. In most cases, an individual who is in that situation, such as an infant, would be represented by their parents. In a situation in which they were suing their parents, because the parents were, for example, driving the car, a litigation friend would be appointed by the court. In the case that they would be unable to find a competent adult who met all the criteria stated by the hon. Gentleman, including there not being a conflict of interest from that individual, it would be possible to appoint the official solicitor. In a case in which that, too, failed, judicial discretion remains to move the case of the infant out of the small claims track into the fast track, where the legal costs would be recoverable. Of course, judges would still have a very serious role to play in approving any settlement made to an infant or any protected party. That was why Lord Justice Patten made this ruling in the case of Dockerill v. Tullet:

“I can see no reason in principle why a small damages claim made by an infant should be taken out of the small claims track merely because of the age of the claimant. It is also clear that the premise on which CPR 45.7 operates is that the normal track for damages by infants will be the small claims track.”

That brings me to my conclusion. This very impressive piece of legislation has involved the upper House, the Opposition and civil society members throughout its Committee stages. The Government have made a number of very serious concessions to make the process more workable. I pay particular tribute to the Justice Committee for the pressure that it has put on us in relation to a very large number of issues, ranging from the online portal to paid McKenzie friends and vulnerable road users. We have now ended up with a Bill that does not do everything that was set out when the Lord Chancellor initially announced it in autumn 2015. Instead, with a series of realistic, focused and pragmatic compromises, we have struck the right balance between the protection of genuine claimants who have suffered genuine injuries, and the protection of different forms of public interest—in particular, the public interest of people, especially in rural areas, who need to be able to afford their motor insurance in order to move around. This Bill will remove unnecessary complexity, unnecessary costs and, in particular, the moral damage and hazard that currently exist in the form of claims management companies and a few unscrupulous individuals.

As Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood—the previous president of the Supreme Court—pointed out in the upper House, this country is now known throughout the world as a haven for unnecessary whiplash claims. Despite a significant reduction in the number of car accidents and an increase in vehicle safety measures over the past 15 years, if not over the last three, we have seen a significant increase in the number of whiplash claims, which can be accounted for only on the basis of fraudulent and exaggerated claims.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.