My Lords, I say at the outset that I strongly support the Bill, as long as the Minister is prepared to accept that it must do something to change the law. For many years, scientists have said that even the act of observation can be enough to change the object being observed. That is true with this Bill, just as it was with Section 1 of the Compensation Act 2006 when that was introduced. I am sad that no one has paid tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott of Foscote, who has been sitting patiently listening to this debate, because, in the words of the Minister, Section 1 of the Compensation Act 2006 was originally based on his brilliant judgment. I would not expect the noble and learned Lord to comment on that, but we all read his judgment, and I concluded that it was one of the best judgments that I have ever read. I hope he will not mind if I use this opportunity to pay tribute to his tremendous skill as a judge.
Surely the effect of this Bill is as follows. A judge hearing a case needs to say to herself or himself, “My decision was going to be this, but before I make that decision I must take account of the Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Act. Having done that, my decision is now this”. Of course, the decision may ultimately be exactly the same, but the process by which it is reached will be subtly different. Today is an opportunity to debate whether the changes to the law introduced by this Bill ought to be rather more overt. This amendment, and others in my name, is intended to stimulate that debate.
I hope the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, will forgive me if I say that I have given up. Every time I set up a target, he puts the patch over his good eye and does not see it. He then protests that there is not a target. I will continue to supply targets. All I would ask is that, as with rehabilitation, he should focus on the issue and then work with all noble Lords to try to improve the Bill rather than seek to reject it as useless. Surely the whole purpose of this House—above all, this Chamber—is that we should seek to improve legislation, not to dismiss it as lacking substance. Let us give it some substance. I am sorry, I must not get too emotional about this.
Amendment 4 is quite detailed but its overall effect is simple enough. In terms, it requires a court to have regard to the resources of the voluntary or charitable organisation, or a state-funded organisation. I regard this as an important adjunct to the common law position. Too often we hear of front-line resources
being diverted to pay for compensation claims instead of paying for services. I shall give one example. Alarm—the Association of Local Authority Risk Managers—reports that councils paid out £32 million for pothole claims in 2012, and in the same period fixed 2.2 million potholes, but that the average English authority was £6.2 million short of the money it needed to complete the repairs properly. That risks generating more claims and taking more money away from councils’ budgets. In these times of significant pressure on state resources, a spiral of compensation claims is surely not the way forward. Likewise, the voluntary and charitable sector has finite resources which should properly be concentrated on its various good causes. If its limited budget has to go to fund claims or pay increased insurance premiums, what on earth is the sense in that?
I believe that this amendment would help both sectors to bring their resources to focus on helping society, not the compensation bandwagon. It is no accident that when I searched for the statistics I used earlier, the search results started with, “Pothole Bike Accident—injured by pothole?”, and, “Entitled to compensation?”. I shall not name the organisations because they do not deserve that publicity, but they were a claimant solicitor firm and a claims farmer respectively. Surely there must be a better way. I beg to move.
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