My Lords, I declare an interest as a non-executive director of Thompsons, a leading personal injury firm. I have two or three questions for the Minister, particularly on Amendment 1. I thank him for the reply we received to the letter he referred to.
The House of Lords Regulatory Reform Committee advised that the key measures in this Bill, including the levels of compensation for claimants under the tariff scheme, should feature in primary legislation, not secondary. The Constitution Committee said that Ministers should follow this advice unless there were clear and compelling reasons not to. There seems to be a trend for the Government to seek wide delegated powers that permit the determination and implementation of policy. The Constitution Committee warned that the restraint shown by noble Lords towards secondary legislation might not be sustained—a serious warning to the Government that, if this trend continues, secondary legislation might be much more difficult to accomplish. I will be interested to hear the Minister’s comments on that.
Secondly, given that the employer liability clauses will not be dealt with through the new online portal, which is being reserved for whiplash claims, can the Minister confirm that the courts will be able to cope with what will undoubtedly be an increased number of claims without the presence of expert legal representation? It is estimated that they could increase from 5% to 30% of the total number of cases. Can the courts manage that extra responsibility?
Finally, what is meant by “in the long term”? This relates to paragraph 5.66 of the whiplash impact assessment accompanying the Bill, where the Government state that, taking into account adjustments to pre-action protocols, they consider that
“in the long term the courts would operate at cost recovery”.
I would be grateful for an explanation of what cost recovery means in this context.