Financial Guidance and Claims Bill [Lords]

Stephen Kerr Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 22nd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

I will try to do a great deal better than 10 minutes to 12 minutes, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a great pleasure to follow the thoughtful speech of the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams). I welcome the Bill and will of course be delighted to support it later on this evening, and I want to talk about part 2 and claims management companies.

The reason why I have taken an interest in claim management companies is that my wife and I were involved in a minor road traffic accident on the M5 a few years ago, while heading to Cornwall for a family holiday. For a year or so following that minor bump, I was plagued with calls to my mobile phone on an almost weekly basis by a claims management company. Goodness knows how it got my number. In each call, it essentially tried to persuade me to submit a fraudulent claim for whiplash. No matter how persistently I told the caller that my family and I suffered absolutely no injury and that we did not have even the slightest ache or pain, they would say, “Well, if you just tell us that your neck hurts a bit, we will get you £3,000.” They were extremely persistent, and I can imagine that if somebody was a bit short of cash, they might succumb to that kind of blandishment. I therefore made the topic something that I wanted to get involved in after being elected, and I have raised it several times in Westminster Hall and am delighted to be able to raise it again today.

The number of whiplash or soft tissue injury claims following minor road traffic accidents has increased by an astonishing 50% over the past few years. At the same time, the number of road traffic accidents has gone down by 30%, so the number of accidents that lead to a claim has increased stratospherically. If we compare the number of claims in this country with those in an equivalent European country, such as France or Germany, there are far more claims here than elsewhere in Europe.

As the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth mentioned, a similar phenomenon has recently started in relation to claims for gastric illness—tummy upsets—on holiday. I remind the House of my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests of a shareholding in a small holiday business, although not one that has had a significant problem in this area.

Since 2013, there has been a 568% increase in claims for tummy upsets on holiday. There have been some notorious cases, such as that of Deborah Briton and Paul Roberts, who a short time ago were respectively sentenced to nine months and 15 months in prison by Liverpool Crown court having rather foolishly tweeted and posted on Facebook about how wonderful their holiday was before trying to claim, at the behest of some claims management company, that the holiday had been ruined by gastric illness.

Such cases, in which claims management companies have incited the public essentially to commit fraud, are becoming all too common. My objection to the activities of such claims management companies is twofold. First, they are inciting otherwise law-abiding members of the public to commit fraud, which is clearly a morally corrosive phenomenon. Secondly, of course, the cost of all these compensation payments is ultimately borne by drivers through higher insurance premiums—some people estimate the total cost of that at an extra £2.5 billion—or by consumers through higher holiday costs.

It is consumers—our constituents—who end up bearing the cost of such activities, so I am pleased that the Bill will begin to take steps to sort it out. Why does this happen? It happens because there are enormous financial incentives for claims management companies to operate in this way, particularly due to the concept of one-way cost shifting whereby, unusually, even if the defendant—the holiday company or the car insurance company—successfully defends a case, it none the less has to pay the claimant’s legal costs. The legal costs for a fully contested case often run up to £10,000 or more, whereas settling a case often costs only £3,000 or £4,000, so the insurer or the holiday company sadly has a financial incentive to settle and the claims management company, knowing that, simply has to process the paperwork to collect very high fees.

Claims management companies are responding to a financial incentive that the current system has unfortunately created. The number of claims management companies mushroomed from 500 in 2006 to 3,300 in 2011. I am pleased to say that measures already taken have reduced the figure to 1,500, but that is still far too high and there is definitely more we need to do.

I welcome the fact that the Bill will transfer oversight responsibilities to the Financial Conduct Authority, and I certainly welcome the introduction of fee caps for claims management companies. We must be careful to draft those regulations to ensure that claims management companies cannot circumvent the cap. The cap refers to 20% or 25% of net recovery, and we need to ensure claims management companies cannot somehow extract any portion of the recovery by way of fixed charges levied upfront. We have to be careful about the detail of the wording because these companies are adept at circumventing Government attempts to restrict their activities.

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech on an important issue. He will understand how much Scottish Conservative Members support the Bill because, until now, in Scotland there has been no protection whatever for consumers in the face of this onslaught by claims management companies.

[Chris Philp]

I am shocked to learn that the Scottish Government have been so slow to take action when the Westminster Government have been so quick.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kerr]

That’s not true.

[Chris Philp]

I notice that my hon. Friend takes a different view from the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray), and no doubt he will elaborate on that point if he speaks later in the debate.