My Lords, I am grateful for the debate and the contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Beecham and Lord Pannick, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown. They seem to agree about the Bill, but not about the amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is not enthusiastic about the Compensation Act. I think it is fair to say that he said that in fact he thought the previous Labour Government had nodded, as did Homer, when they brought it in. Therefore the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, relied upon by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, would have less to commend them in his view. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, on the other hand, says that the Compensation Act has been working well.
The view of the Government is that the Labour Party was quite right to indentify the issue and to endeavour to reflect the problems that were identified by the committee which eventually decided to report. There followed the Compensation Bill, but it failed to go far enough. A number of other steps have followed, the common law has of course developed as I entirely accept, and here we have a Bill that endeavours to deal with what I have frankly said is a very difficult target to hit. I know that noble Lords feel that it is a target that can be hit by the common law without any statutory intervention.
However, the amendments put forward here come into different categories. I accept that there are similarities between Section 1 of the Compensation Act and Clause 2 of this Bill. The 2006 Act provides that the court may,
when determining whether a defendant has taken reasonable care, consider whether a finding of negligence could prevent a desirable activity from being undertaken or discourage others from undertaking functions in connection with such an activity. It does not require the court to enter into such consideration.
However, Clause 2 of SARAH takes a different and firmer approach than the Compensation Act by requiring the courts to consider in every case whether a person was acting for the benefit of society or any of its members. It focuses more firmly on the actions of the defendant in a particular case than on the effect that a finding of negligence might have on others participating in similar activities. For these reasons we consider that Clause 2 of our Bill will provide greater reassurance than the 2006 Act has done to those in the voluntary sector and elsewhere who are still deterred from getting involved in socially valuable activities by worries about liability. I do not suppose that they will have Halsbury’s Laws of England to hand when making these difficult decisions, but their general approach will be affected by the climate and the context in which we live and the way the law reflects that.
The noble Lord says that if we want to compel the courts to consider the type of factors set out in Clauses 2 to 4 of the current Bill, we could have achieved that simply by requiring the courts to consider the points in Section 1 of the Compensation Act. His Amendment 2 would therefore replace the word “may” in that Act with the word “must”. I am not convinced that changing one word in the Compensation Act would have the same impact as our standalone Bill, which has been deliberately designed to be comprehensible to non-lawyers. Indeed, the National Council for Voluntary Organisations mentioned in oral evidence that if the Bill is passed, it could help to publicise that via its volunteering network. As I have said, Clause 2 has a different and clearer focus than Section 1 of the 2006 Act, and I believe that it better addresses the genuine concerns of volunteers and others.
I turn now to Amendments 3, 5 and 9 tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Beecham and Lord Kennedy of Southwark. They would remove the requirement for the courts to consider the factors in the Bill in any case in which they were determined, whether someone was negligent or in breach of a relevant statutory duty. Instead, it would be purely a matter of discretion as to whether they took account of the factors in the Bill. This would revert to the terminology of the Compensation Act, which, as I have said, provides that the courts “may” consider whether a finding of negligence might prevent a desirable activity from being undertaken or discourage people from undertaking functions in connection with such an activity.
In our view, that could unacceptably weaken the Bill. The main point of the Bill is to provide people who are deterred from getting involved with greater reassurance that the courts will always look at the context of their actions before reaching a conclusion on liability. It is our view that the Compensation Act has not done enough to address people’s worries about liability, as recent polls carried out by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, St John Ambulance and the British Heart Foundation have demonstrated.
We are hopeful that the Bill will do more than the Compensation Act did to increase public confidence in the law and increase participation in socially valuable activities. We fear that reverting to the terminology used in the 2006 Act, which as I have indicated the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has reservations about, would not be helpful in this regard. In many cases it may not make much difference whether the word is “must” or “may”, and all will depend on the particular facts of the case.
I accept the strictures about transposing arguments from one Bill to another made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown. Enthusiasm probably overtook me in making that analogy, having recently suffered several defeats on the part of the Government in that context. My point, however, remains that there is a difference between the words “must” and “may”, but that difference will depend very much on the context. Judges are well used to having to fight their way through the undergrowth of statutory terminology; sometimes they must do something and sometimes they may do it. They will of course be approaching these cases very much on the facts. We think that in this difficult area the Bill does its best to fulfil the social objective that lies behind it and, with great respect, we do not think that it would be improved by any of these amendments. It is in those circumstances that I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.