Compensation Bill [Lords]

The hon. Gentleman has got the facts wrong. The main liability does not fall on the insurers but on the Government, as claims are made against the Ministry of Defence, schools and so on. There is therefore a case for Government, insurers, and companies that cannot trace previous insurers to come together in a simple scheme. This is an urgent problem, because of the speed with which the condition progresses, but it will be with us for a very long time indeed. Most estimates suggest that mesothelioma cases will peak in 2020, which is a long way away so, for the future, it is important to introduce a simple system that works. I hope that the Government can act as an honest broker, but we should also bear in mind the fact that they have an interest, too. As I said, however, we are prepared to take a constructive approach. In addition to the Constitutional Affairs Committee, which produced an excellent report, may I thank the Better Regulation Task Force, which has served us well by publishing a very good report, ““Better Routes to Redress””? That report cited a survey of 212 councils in England and Wales carried out by Zurich Municipal and the Local Government Association, in which 85 per cent. of respondents agreed that the"““introduction of conditional fee arrangements has increased the annual cost to my authority of handling compensation claims””." In addition to the abolition of legal aid for personal injury cases, the growth of claims management companies has fuelled the development of a compensation culture. The Constitutional Affairs Committee concluded that introduction of conditional fee arrangements and a class of unregulated intermediaries acting as claims managers have"““adversely affected the reputation of legal services providers. The increased awareness of the public that it is possible to sue without personal financial risk, when combined with media attention to… unmeritorious claims being brought, has contributed to a widely held opinion that we do indeed have a compensation culture””." My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) and other hon. Members have cited many such cases, and I should like to make special mention of the examples provided by the scouts and the Field Studies Council . We have all seen headlines in the newspapers: a teacher won £55,000 after slipping on a chip at school; a boy received £4,000 after falling 1 ft from a tree; and a council tenant who had drunk 10 pints fell in the middle of the night as he tried to change a light bulb. I am sure that the hon. Member for Hendon would say that those are meritorious claims, but they give rise to questions, and they are certainly food and drink to the tabloid newspaper industry.