§ Mr. Jack Ashley (Stoke-on-Trent, South)I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to enable all citizens harmed by the actions and products of others to be entitled to fair and prompt compensation at reasonable cost.The Bill will revolutionise compensation for personal injury and will help to prevent discrimination against injured individuals. It will provide fair and reasonable guidelines, ensure speedier settlements and guarantee equitable and realistic payments. As an added bonus, it will reduce legal wrangling and cut lawyers' bills.The natural parent of the Bill is the Opren saga. Any change in the law cannot now help people damaged by Opren, but the least the House can do is to avert similar legal disasters occurring—even if it cannot prevent medical disasters.
In August 1982 Opren was withdrawn from the British market. It had been on sale in Britain for just over two years, and there had been a record 3,963 adverse reaction reports, including 83 deaths. The manufacturers, Eli Lilly, stubbornly rejected calls for a reasonable compensation scheme for those who were severely injured by their defective product. It took a five-year legal battle and a rescue operation by Mr. Geoffrey Bradman before a settlement was announced.
It was a miserly settlement, which was widely resented and accepted only under duress of fear of the consequences of refusal. The settlement gave less to 1,350 British Opren sufferers together than the company paid to one American victim. Elderly British men and women who had become refugees from sunlight and prisoners in their own homes after taking Opren were offered an average of just £2,000, compared with a jury award of $6 million to one American.
The imposed settlement made no sense compared with the American outcome. In our country, as an award for crippling injury, it compared grotesquely with libel awards of hundreds of thousands for injured reputations. The settlement shamed the wealthy, multinational company, but it also discredited the British legal system, which lent itself readily to exploitation.
Some people believe that these derisory awards resulted from a legal miscalculation. It is worth noting that a second legal opinion recommended far higher awards. Others believe that the reason for the small settlement was the British habit of relying on precedent. When a case is decided on the basis of an earlier unjust one, it perpetuates gross injustice. Whatever the cause, Parliament should take remedial action. If it does, never again will a foreign company be able to exploit British law so avidly, denying our people even a fraction of the huge payments it gave so readily to its own people.
A major failing of our compensation system is the legal under-estimation of pain, suffering and a restricted life. The Opren offers were derisory, partly because they were for elderly retired people who did not require large payments for loss of earnings. With most Opren damage, no large payments were necessary for additional costs, such as nursing care. But that did not mean that there was no suffering. A serious omission was that there was no fair 1129 payment, as there should have been, for the loss of freedom to walk and sit in the sun or for the loss of comfort and freedom from pain.
My Bill would establish a compensation advisory board which would propose a new basis for personal injury compensation. The Bill is an important part of the Citizens Action Campaign, presided over by Lord Scarman. It seeks to overcome all the unjustified obstacles facing an unfortunate victim suffering from personal injury. The members of the compensation board would be appointed by the Lord Chancellor and would include people with a wide range of specified experience. It would have two years to prepare recommendations for compensation levels appropriate to different kinds of injury and suffering. From time to time it would review its recommendations, and revise them where appropriate. It would make annual reports to the Lord Chancellor. The board would be an advisory one, but it would become an authoritative and influential body and its views would be respected and acted upon. It would replace precedent and the views of a single judge with the views of a balanced and representative body looking carefully at compensation problems. I believe that it would be welcomed by judges and the legal profession generally.
The Bill backs the small guy against the big. It seeks to take account of suffering and to help people when they are most vulnerable. It will bring about a much needed reassessment of our legal values. It is very badly needed.
In conclusion, the triumph of the thalidomide children brought high hopes for justice for the future. That was more than a decade ago. The Pearson commission was appointed, and eventually reported in a blaze of publicity, but successive Governments have been indifferent to its recommendations. The arguments and even the issues highlighted in that report have been neglected. One of the tragic results of that has been the Opren scandal. It is time now for the House to ensure progress towards fairness and justice, and the Bill is a major step in that direction. I commend it to the House.