Compensation Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 20:"After Clause 1, insert the following new clause—" ““APOLOGIES, OFFERS OF TREATMENT OR OTHER REDRESS    An apology or offer of treatment or other redress shall not amount to an admission of negligence.”” The noble Lord said: I think that it was Sir Elton John—who is very topical at present—who, with Blue, sang,"““Sorry seems to be the hardest word””." The amendment is intended to provoke a change in culture. It embodies the idea that an apology, an offer of rehabilitation, should not be treated as an admission of negligence. Arguably, that could lead to the biggest cultural change of all. In countless instances where something unpleasant has happened to someone, his or her main concerns are getting better quickly, receiving an appropriate apology and ensuring that the necessary lessons are learnt so that what happens to him or her will not happen to others. That is the antithesis of the compensation culture. The thinking behind the amendment also dovetails perfectly with the concept behind the NHS Redress Bill, as well as offering the opportunity to make serious progress on the important question of rehabilitation, which we all want. An apology can be enormously important and significant to someone who has been injured, especially psychologically, but the present system scares people off from making an apology. There is a reluctance to apologise, for fear that an apology will be perceived as an implied acceptance of liability—that if someone has said sorry or words to that effect a claimant will subsequently be able to argue that such an apology amounted to an admission that can be relied on. First, I refer to the Better Regulation Task Force report of last year. At page 7, it states:"““An apology can go a long way. We need to move away from the situation where an apology is seen as an admittance of liability. In a survey commissioned by the Chief Medical Officer in 2002, 34 per cent of respondents who have been affected by medical injury wanted an apology or an explanation””." The Minister will probably say, ““I agree, but I do not agree to the amendment””. Why do we need the amendment? Despite what the noble Lord, the Lord Chairman, may from time to time say to me about my overindulgence in decided cases, there is a number of such cases. In Mary Ann Slack v Rotherham General Hospital NHS Trust, the claimant tried to use in evidence the fact that she said that the defendant’s employee had said sorry. Citing the case on 9 October, the statement made on the half of the claimant concludes:"““on this account, she apologised for it and accepted responsibility for what had happened””." The counter was that there was no apology because there was nothing to apologise for. So there was an unseemly dispute before the court about whether an apology amounted to an admission of liability. In a similar case, Kay Sheldon v East Norfolk Health Authority, on 1 August 2000, the point was made, as it is in so many cases in assessing the prognosis that,"““The claimant was greatly distressed by the absence of an apology by the defendant””." This is not just a whimsical point. In some cases, a claimant to whom an apology has been made can cite that as another substantive illustration of how they have been badly treated, which can exacerbate a claim. In the Sheldon case, the claimant’s psychiatric illness had been misdiagnosed, it was alleged, by the defendant, but it was made clear that her recovery had been delayed by the absence of an apology. The course of justice would run much more smoothly if people could just say sorry without any consequences. I beg to move.