Compensation Bill [HL]

My Lords, I must begin by saying that I am sorry. I am always sorry when I would dearly like to accept an amendment but cannot. I share the sentiments expressed by all noble Lords who have spoken. I appreciate and understand what is being sought by this amendment. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of the Wirral, will not mind my saying that I was very keen to try to find a way of accepting this amendment. The reason why I cannot became clear when I sought advice. I hesitate to say that, given all the legal expertise surrounding me, but I hope that noble Lords will appreciate that I must go to my legal advisors and see where that takes me. We went to parliamentary counsel to see whether we could accept the amendment and to confirm that the amendment would not change the law but correct the perception of what the law does. I have already made the case in Clause 1 for perception being an important element in all our work on compensation. Regardless of whether you believe that we have a compensation culture—and the evidence suggests per se that we do not—it is very definitely perceived that we do. It is important for governments to take perception as seriously as reality in this particular context. I sought advice on that basis. However, we were unable to produce a meaningful legislative proposition without changing the law. That is because the amendment, as it stands, begs the question of what an apology of itself is. Any doubt about what constitutes an apology, and whether it acts in any way as an admission that the maker was at fault, is a doubt about that facts and the circumstances of the particular case. It is not possible for legislation to resolve that sort of doubt except by imposing a presumption one way or the other. We believe that that runs the risk of changing the law. I agree that it is important to address this issue. Although I know that this may not satisfy noble Lords, I must make clear that part of the work of the ministerial group is to address all issues of the compensation culture where the Government have a role to play. The group receives representations from nine departments but 11 Ministers are members of it. I chair it and it meets regularly. The group includes my colleagues from the Department of Health, the Home Office and the Department for Work and Pensions, where my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath is working with me on rehabilitation issues. The Health and Safety Executive is able to come to talk to us. Our ambition is to produce opportunities right across government to address this problem wherever it arises and to support organisations, whether they be schools, voluntary organisations, local authorities or others, in resisting unfounded claims and developing strategies to deal with such claims. At the same time—I stress this—we want to make it easier and simpler for well founded claims to be dealt with. I agree wholeheartedly with what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, said about the need to deal with rehabilitation issues, and I know that we will talk about that further. But I believe that putting people back to where they were is absolutely the right way to approach this matter. Therefore, I propose to take this issue to the ministerial group. As noble Lords probably know already, we have a number of stakeholders from industry and from organisations involved in areas where this is a particular concern. We are working together to address a number of different concerns and to come up with solutions which will not necessarily be legislative—although, I hasten to add, I do not rule that out in the future—but which will tackle those concerns in the most appropriate way. Although the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, talked about what has already been said in the courts about motor insurance policies, I think that that is also in the area of perception. People believe that if their policies say that they should not apologise, they should therefore not apologise. I agree with everything that has been said about buying Willy a bicycle—that would be good. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, does ride a bicycle.