Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Bill [Lords]

I am grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman for bringing his experience to bear on this debate; it is incredibly useful. I suppose that, to a certain extent, we all ought to declare an interest in these matters as consumers, because some of our arrangements may be affected. The hon. and learned Gentleman is right that the 1906 Act has stood the test of time for a considerable period, indeed for more than a century. I confess that I do not have a copy of it in front of me, but I will paraphrase its arrangements. It enshrined in law certain principles of disclosure. In particular, it placed a considerable emphasis on the requirement for the party seeking insurance to disclose any issues that might be broadly relevant in the insurance process. It did not require the insurer to ask a series of specific questions about the particulars of the individual being insured. That was left to the discretion of the insurer. That is part of contract law. Of course, common law has accrued since that time. Some serious problems have developed in recent decades in relation to where the balance is struck between the insurer and the person being insured. The onus falls perhaps too heavily on the person who is being insured. For example, if you have taken out household contents insurance recently, Mr Deputy Speaker—I am not sure whether you have, but I suggest that you do, because it is a wise thing to do even though it can be quite expensive—you may have been asked a number of questions about the type of mortice lock you have and other things about your place of residence. If you did not volunteer particular data about the building in which you reside, how frequently you are away on business and so on, an insurer with a beady eye on avoiding an obligation to pay up could invalidate your insurance should you be unfortunate enough to be burgled and need to make a claim. That would be through no fault of your own, other than your failure to disclose a number of matters to the insurer. Consumers up and down the country have had such problems for a long time, and they cause great frustration and sometimes a sense of mistrust between insurance companies and parties seeking to be insured. I therefore welcome the Bill, which has a large dollop of cross-party support. It will hopefully clarify the issue and move us on from the 1906 Act, however finely drafted it was. It will put in statute a clear and simple set of rules updating the law on pre-contractual disclosure, and it will address the problem of misrepresentations being made, sometime deliberately but often unwittingly. It is important that the accretion of case law, guidance and voluntary codes is superseded by this statute law. It is important that we have the opportunity to review the Bill one year from its commencement, partly because of the good faith that many consumer bodies have placed in it. Many organisations have written to support the proposals in it, which is a very good thing. They have done a fantastic job of scrutinising the development of the Bill by the Law Commission. To assure those bodies that the Bill's provisions have been the right ones to put on the statute book, a simple commitment to a review after a year would not be especially onerous. Paragraph 17 of the regulatory impact assessment mentions that a number of additional claims payments might result from the tightening up of disclosure provisions under the Bill. They represent a fraction of total payments, but it will be interesting to see whether consumers receive payouts more frequently as a result of the specificity that the Bill will introduce to insurance contracts. There are different types of insurance market, and we cannot simply lump them all together and assume that they will all be affected equally by the Bill. Certain insurance contracts related to the business sector are covered by other legislation in different parts of the world. There are certain consumer insurance contracts, however, that could be regarded as discretionary or luxury insurance. It might be desirable to have them, but they are not essential for daily life. For instance, the Government Whip may have a pet animal—a cat or a dog.