My Lords, Amendment 6 deals with the provisions of Clause 3, which purports to be—and as I understand it, the Government agree to be—the only substantive change in the law that the Bill promotes. That, of course, raises the question of the relevance of the other clauses of this ephemeral legislative concoction, but it is also unacceptable in itself.
Clause 3 requires the court to,
“have regard to whether the person, in carrying out the activity in the course of which the alleged negligence or breach of statutory duty occurred, demonstrated a generally responsible approach towards protecting the safety or other interests of others”.
At Second Reading I asked what was meant by a “generally responsible” approach. The Minister did not vouchsafe a reply. I do not blame him. The Lord Chancellor and the Minister in the Commons were unable to supply a meaningful interpretation: a case of the inscrutable in search of the unintelligible, or perhaps vice versa.
The Government’s obsession with the so-called compensation culture was reflected in the Lord Chancellor’s response to an Oral Question quoted by the Joint Committee on Human Rights at paragraph 2.35 of its report. The Lord Chancellor talked of the need,
“to provide a deterrent to an employee who tries it on in the face of a responsible employer who has done the right thing, when someone in their employment has done something stupid and still tries to sue. As part of our long-term economic plan”—
I note in parenthesis that it is a long-term economic plan which appears to be growing ever more long-term by the day—
“I want to see those responsible employers protected against spurious claims, and that is what the Bill will do”.—[Official Report, Commons, 1/7/14; col. 731.]
There are, to put it mildly, several problems with that argument. The first is the sheer paucity of evidence for the existence of the compensation culture, apart perhaps from the road traffic cases of whiplash and the like about which we have heard so much today. The second is the apparent belief that the courts are unable to detect whether or not a claim is spurious, given that a claimant has to prove it. The third is that, despite its apparent belief that the Bill,
“is not designed to reduce standards of health and safety in the workplace”,
and,
“will not protect negligent employers who do not have a responsible approach to health and safety”,
the Joint Committee concluded that:
“To the extent that Clause 3 of the Bill will lead to some health and safety cases against employers being decided differently, we do not consider that the Government has demonstrated the need to change the law to restrict employees’ right of access to court for personal injury in the workplace”.
Can the Minister give an assurance that the Joint Committee’s fears in that respect are misplaced and that the Bill is not intended to and will not affect such health and safety cases? He gave a general assurance this afternoon, for which I am grateful, about claims
for employers’ liability. The JCHR raised a specific point in relation to health and safety, and perhaps he will deal with that aspect.
The fourth problem is that the Bill is not, in any event, confined to personal injury cases, and still less to cases brought by employees against their employer, which seemed to be the burden of the Lord Chancellor’s principal concern. Clause 3 refers not just to injury but to safety and “other interests”. It must be taken to include economic interests, such as claims concerning damage to property or professional negligence by, say, an accountant, a financial adviser or, heaven help me, a solicitor. This much was made clear by Mr Vara in his heroic attempts to make the case for this generally irresponsible measure. At column 693 of Hansard he proudly announced:
“We have deliberately drafted the clause broadly... This ensures that it will be relevant in a wide range of situations … The clause is not restricted to personal injury claims and could in principle be applicable in relation to other instances of negligence, such as damage to property or economic loss, where issues of safety may not necessarily be relevant”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/10/14; col. 693.]
Presumably, issues of heroism would be equally irrelevant. Note that he assumes that negligence exists in such claims but excuses it in the manner of the old saw about the housemaid’s baby: “It’s only a little one”—a “Downton Abbey” analogy, I suppose. It is a rather curious way to approach legislation.
Perhaps the Minister will tell us the difference between being responsible and being generally responsible, and why the clause extends to a wide variety of claims which have nothing whatever to do with social action, volunteering or heroism. Perhaps he will also comment on the paucity of any evidence provided to the Joint Committee by the Government in answer to its request for examples of what the Lord Chancellor described as,
“a jobsworth culture or a legalistic culture that seems to stop common sense in its tracks”.
It asked for such information but received none. Where, one might ask, is the evidence of a common-sense approach, let alone one grounded in an understanding of the law and the courts that one has the right to expect a Lord Chancellor to display?
The twofold approach that I adopt in moving the amendment and speaking to the clause stand part debate is, first, to endeavour to effect a modest improvement in Clause 3 by removing the word “generally” so that that fairly vague and opaque term disappears; and, secondly, to address the general position in relation to the clause stand part debate—that this is the only substantive change in the Bill, and it is not acceptable. If the Government continue to press for this it will certainly be a matter to which I will return on Report. I hope the Government will concede that it is ill designed and likely to produce effects that are not consistent with the overall theme, however repetitive it might be, of the Compensation Act 2006, and therefore that it contributes nothing but potential difficulty for the future. I beg to move.