Air Accidents (Compensation) (Hansard, 11 February 1981)

§ Mr. Charles R. Morris (Manchester, Openshaw)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to remove limits on compensation payable to the dependants of those who lose their lives or are injured in accidents involving aircraft flying to or from the United Kingdom, established by the Warsaw Convention of 1929 and associated legislation. The Bill seeks to right the injustice that confronts the dependants of those who lose their lives in air crashes. The injustice is in the limits on liability and compensation, under the 1929 Warsaw convention and the associated protocols and legislation enacted since that date, given to dependants of those who lose their lives in accidents involving aircraft.

Few, if any, air passengers, particularly package holiday-makers, when responding to the call that the aircraft is ready for boarding, think about the level of compensation that their dependants might receive if a terrible tragedy befell the aircraft, and rightly so. The British and international aviation industries have a proud safety record. However, because the public are unaware that there is a ceiling on liability and the amount of compensation available for loss of life in such circumstances, Parliament should be ever vigilant to ensure that dependants receive the justice that they are entitled to expect.

The Warsaw convention under which the ceiling on liability and compensation is imposed is a shambles. It reduces compensation to a lottery. It is a riddle. I need only record the multiplicity of maxima for compensation to justify that assertion.

Under the Warsaw convention and the Hague protocol of 1955 the maximum compensation available is £9,500. Under the 1966 Montreal IATA agreement, flights to and 882 from the United States have a maximum compensation liability level of £34,000. British airlines have a maximum liability of £25,000. Those amounts are only a fraction of the damage that can be claimed under the British law of negligence if an individual loses his life in a bus or rail crash. If a man of about 30, earning about £10,000 a year, loses his life in a bus crash, his dependent wife and three children might expect to receive damages of about £100,000. A man recently lost his life, and in an action against British Rail his wife and dependent family received damages of about £170,000. Had those two individuals lost their lives in air crashes, the maximum that their dependants might have expected to receive would have been £25,000, £9,500 or, at the most, £34,000.

An even greater anomaly is that the dependants of an aircraft pilot and crew who are killed are in no way inhibited by the limits of the Warsaw convention and the associated protocols. The dependants of a pilot with a salary in excess of £20,000 a year might expect to receive compensation of around £200,000.

Successive Governments, both Labour and Conservative, have sought to raise the level of compensation, and legislation that comes into effect in April will raise the limit to £56,000—but that level is six years out of date. It comes from the Montreal protocol of 1975. Fifty-six thousand pounds might seem a reasonable level, but it in no way compares with the amount of damage that dependants might expect to receive under the British law of negligence.

The Bill seeks to restore the right of individuals to have damages determined by the British courts. Alternatively, I seek the re-establishment of the Warsaw convention, with realistic levels of compensation.