Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

I apologise to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) for having misinterpreted—and for perhaps leading you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to misinterpret —his meaningful pause, which sometimes occurs when senior counsel are delivering their well-chosen words, and which led me to think he had finished his speech. I commend the members of my Committee who have brought this issue to the attention of the House: the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) and the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner). The current system reveals many shortcomings in dealing with matters of this kind. I can recall a case, which went on for many years, of a young man who was brain damaged for life because he was not provided with proper recovery following an operation after a road accident. It was only when I managed to drag some information out of a health authority that the third firm of solicitors involved sued the second firm of solicitors for its professional negligence in allowing the matter to run out of time when a claim against the health authority would have been successful had it been undertaken with that information in the first place. These very difficult matters frequently involve the kind of cases that most of us are concerned about tonight: lifetime injury cases with very high care costs for those involved. My understanding is that when it comes to recovering costs from people who have been awarded damages in these circumstances, they will be recovered not from their damages for care, but from the other aspect of damages; a provision that the court has made for someone's lifelong welfare ought not to be affected. That brings me to the issue raised by my hon. and learned Friend: there may be a group of cases that are not satisfactorily embraced by the Government's exceptional provisions, which it is estimated will cost £6 million of the £16 million currently spent and which I hope will pick up some of most serious cases, but that will be dealt with by the conditional fee arrangement system. That has to be viewed against the background of the Jackson proposals, and I hope that the Minister will say something about the concern that after-the-event insurance may be too costly to be undertaken when it is needed to gain expert reports. Another concern is that there may not even be an effective market in this type of insurance for such a limited range of cases and therefore one aspect of what is left for that middle group of cases may not prove to be available in practice. The group of people I am most concerned about are those whose injuries will last a lifetime. The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd mentioned birth injuries, and I am particularly concerned about parents who need to ensure that care is provided beyond their lifetimes to their children. Many of us have dealt with elderly parents who have had worries of this kind for children with brain injuries. Members of this House and those in the other place need to be assured that this combination of measures—the willingness of solicitors and counsel to undertake cases as an appreciation of their significance and the public good, the availability of the Government's exceptional provisions for some types of serious case and what remains of the CFA system—will between them cater for some of these very serious cases. This House and the other place will need to be given some assurance, otherwise I strongly suspect that when the Bill comes back to us it will have been significantly amended.