My Lords, in short, I can confirm what the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said. Amendment 1 would insert a new subsection at the end of Clause 1, stating that nothing in the Act provides an exemption from vicarious liability to an employer or other person. The Government do not believe that this is necessary. As I endeavoured to explain in my recent letter dealing with points raised by the noble Lord and other Members of the House at Second Reading, while the Bill requires the courts to consider certain factors before reaching a decision about liability, it does not tell the court what conclusion it should reach or prevent a person being found negligent if all the circumstances of the case warrant it. It will not therefore give anyone licence to take unnecessary risks with people’s safety or leave the injured party without a remedy when the defendant has failed to meet the applicable standard of care in all the circumstances of the case.
If the actions of an employer, for example, were risky or careless and they led to an injury, it would be open to the courts to conclude that the factors in the Bill did not outweigh other pertinent factors, such as the size and foreseeability of the risk, the adequacy of training and the extent of the injury, and, as a result, to reach a finding of negligence if appropriate. This will equally be the case where a claim is brought against the employer in respect of the allegedly negligent act or omissions of an employee under the law on vicarious liability. It is important to stress that the Bill is not intended to have any bearing on the rules governing the imposition of vicarious liability, which are well established in law. In the light of this, I can reassure the noble Lord that any suggestion that the Bill would leave injured Armed Forces personnel without a remedy in the civil courts, whether under the law on vicarious liability or otherwise, is misleading. There is nothing in the Bill to prevent a claim being brought against an employer by an injured employee, whether in the Armed Forces, the emergency services or more generally.
Of course, the liability of the Ministry of Defence has recently been the subject of a great deal of litigation, not least in the case of Smith v Ministry of Defence. The noble Lord and the Committee may be aware of the difficult arguments about the scope of so-called battlefield immunity and the relevance of the Human
Rights Act. But all those issues, difficult though they are, are nothing to the point in relation to the conventional rules on vicarious liability. For the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, gave in his analysis of the Bill, I can assure the noble Lord—I understand why there is anxiety and I wish to allay that anxiety—that there is no need for anxiety and vicarious liability is not intended to nor will be altered in any way by the provisions of the Bill.
In those circumstances, we respectfully suggest that the provision suggested by the noble Lord is unnecessary, and I hope that I have reassured him sufficiently to feel able to withdraw his amendment.
3.45 pm