HL Deb 20 January 1982 vol 426 cc615-25

3.6 p.m.

Lord Allen of Abbeydale rose to call attention to the recommendations of the Pearson Royal Commission on Civil Liability (Cmnd. 7054–1) and in particular the desirability of beginning its implementation by introducing a basic " no-fault " compensation scheme for road accidents, broadly on the lines of the industrial injuries scheme; and to move for Papers.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. The Royal Commission on Civil Liability and Compensation for Personal Injury, under the chairmanship of Lord Pearson, on whom we look back with such warm regard and affection, submitted its report nearly four years ago. It had a widely representative membership—I think that I could claim to be the least expert member—and on the main issues it was unanimous. Since then, apart from minor points and a somewhat unhappy approach to the problem of product liability, we have had no reaction from Government. I know only too well that that experience is not unique for a Royal Commission, but the issues here are very important. We, on the commission, may not have come up with the right answers—there is certainly no shortage of people who think that we did not—but the issues ought to be discussed and not just left in the hope that they will go quietly away.

I am grateful to noble Lords who have put down their names to speak in this debate. It is clear that we shall have a wide-ranging contribution of views, I suspect falling short of the unanimity that we achieved on the commission itself. If I had been more farsighted, I would no doubt have put down a Motion today referring to the recommendations of the commission about strict liability in relation to travel by rail. But as it was, I thought it right to pick on road accidents, on which the commission had a great deal of evidence, rather than attempt to cover the whole vast field. But it was no wish of mine to exclude other points on the report and, indeed, as regards road accidents, I cannot discuss them without also going on to raise a main theme of the report, going well beyond road accidents—namely, that there should be a new relationship between social security and tort. So far, the two of them have got along with only a nodding acquaintance. I hope, by the way, that noble Lords from north of the Border will forgive me if I do not refer throughout separately to delict.

I should like to make it clear at the outset that what I am talking about today is, in effect, a proposal for a two-tier system. At the lower tier there would be a basic scheme for paying compensation promptly through the state machinery in the event of death or injury in a road accident without the need to demonstrate that anyone was at fault. At the upper tier the tort system would continue to operate to top up the basic award in serious cases, but it would be a tort system with some new features.

There are not many members of the community who can altogether avoid the risk of road injury. We have just now been exchanging views about the accidents in which motor-cyclists are involved. The fact is that each year in Great Britain upwards of 6,000 people are killed and well over 300,000 injured, some 80,000 of them seriously. Road accidents account for something like one in eight of all injuries and one in three of all accidental deaths. Those injured and bereaved may derive payments from various sources-sickness benefit, personal injury insurance, and so on. But the common law principle that there is no liability in the absence of fault remains as valid now as it did in the days of the horse and carriage. The victim gets no award from the courts unless he can show that someone was negligent in his duty of care; in other words, that someone was at fault.

This is where one begins to run into—which is perhaps an appropriate phrase—the snags of the tort system. The first and most obvious problem is that it is not easy to find witnesses. Even if you can find them their recollection of what happened, usually so quickly and so unexpectedly, may not be all that reliable, particularly if they are giving evidence long afterwards, perhaps years after the event. Another problem is the length of time which tort cases inevitably take even though the impact of prolonged delay may now be softened by interim awards.

The need to go into the separate details of each individual case means too that administration costs are bound to be high; something like 45 per cent. of the total cost of tort compensation plus operating costs. I do not want to over-dramatise but I would not quarrel with how an experienced solicitor put it in a letter to The Times when he said: the present law …is a lottery, depending on the skill of a lawyer, the whim of a judge and the availability and reliability of witnesses, who may be inaccurate as to their recollections". There is indeed an accumulation of evidence to suggest that many people who are injured cannot establish a claim, and that many do not even try.

It is not surprising that over the years there have been calls for a change. The commission's report records, for example, that back in 1965 the then Lord Chief Justice, Lord Parker, was calling for a committee to consider a no-fault scheme. Nor are the problems confined to this country. On the commission we had a look at various types of no-fault schemes already functioning in Sweden, New Zealand, some of the Australian states, all the provinces in Canada, and a number of states in the USA. We all of us came to the conclusion that the time had come for some kind of no-fault scheme here for road traffic accidents, notwithstanding that we came to different conclusions for other types of accident, as, for example, vaccine damage.

However, we found that none of the schemes in other countries really fitted our own circumstances. At the same time, we already have in this country a well-tried no-fault scheme in the shape of the industrial injuries scheme. We concluded that the right course was to adapt this scheme and apply it to road accidents. This would mean introducing a scheme run by the Department of Health and Social Security whose administrative costs come out at only a fraction of those of the tort system, and a scheme extended to cover non-earners and children, for whom obviously the industrial scheme does not make provision.

We were well aware that all would not be plain sailing. Although we thought that, for simplicity, the compensation should be the same as in the industrial scheme, which is now itself under review, we recognised that there would be pressure for some already eroded industrial preference to be retained, and we may indeed have been over-optimistic in our final conclusion in going for simplicity—which is not actually the most outstanding characteristic of the national insurance scheme. But the important point is that the road traffic scheme should follow the industrial scheme in making some provision for disablement benefit through loss of faculty.

Then there is the inevitable question: Is the driver to be compensated who was injured through his own clear misconduct? As I understand it, it is pretty rare for the workman injured through his own fault to lose compensation under the industrial scheme, and in general we took the view that criminal behaviour on the roads is a matter for the criminal law. But this is an emotive area and we thought that central Government should have the right to withhold payment for injuries received in the course of committing serious crime.

There are two other difficulties which are rather more substantial. The first is the argument that if there is to be a change it should not be confined to road traffic accidents. What about serious accidents in the home, for example? This is indeed a genuine problem. But after a great deal of thought we concluded that there was a good case, on grounds both of policy and practicability, for moving the boundary lines so as to bring in the particular category we proposed, as has been done in other countries; and we noted too that Parliament long ago picked out motor vehicle injury for special treatment by making third party insurance compulsory.

The second difficulty is the question of cost. With experience of Concorde and the Thames Barrage, and all the rest of it, one is reluctant to he too confident, but the Government Actuary did a most careful analysis, which is set out in some detail in Volume 2 of the commission's report, and calculated that the cost, at 1977 prices, would come out at about £64 million a year after 5 years, and £90 million a year after 40 years, and the same thereafter. These figures would include the sums already paid out of the national insurance fund for sickness benefit to some victims of road accidents.

The initial cost, so we worked out, could have been met by a levy of one penny a gallon on petrol, and that is the method which, with one dissentient, we plumped for. We were very conscious of the objection of hypothecation and of the cries that would go up about setting up of precedent, but it seemed to be such a simple method of putting the onus on those who created the risk. The figures would now have to be brought up to date, hut, given what has been happening and continues to happen to petrol prices, I find it hard to believe that the levy would he all that alarming, given the benefits that would accrue.

There are other possibilities. One of them might be for the state to look for a contribution from the insurance companies, to take aceount of the savings to them as a result of the proposed changes in tort, to which I now briefly turn. I explained at the outset that what we were after was the retention of tort at the upper tier so that compulsory insurance would remain, but that it would be tort with a difference.

A central feature of our report was that the full value of no-fault compensation should be deducted from any tort award. At present, under an Act of 1948, there is an obligation on the courts, in assessing damages for loss of income due to personal injury, to deduct one-half of the value of certain social security benefits for five years. The more one looks at it the more remarkable that compromise seems. We went into its history in some detail but we could not find, the way it came out, that it represented any obvious logic, and it cannot even be worked accurately, as no one can foresee what the social security benefits will be in an inflationary world. We thought the time had come to end it. Social security—and the lawyers on the commission went along with this—should become the major partner and, although tort, with all its imperfections, should be retained, it should be the junior partner to provide a supplementary award in the gravest cases and to deal with property damage.

All this would mean eliminating payments by the insurance companies in those cases—and there would be quite a lot of them—where the social security benefits would be such that there would be no scope at all for topping up; and in the more serious cases it would mean setting off the full value of the social security benefits, which could be substantial, and not just for five years. The Government Actuary calculated that the cost to the companies would be reduced, at 1977 figures, by some £40 million a year or about 4 per cent. in real terms of motor premiums.

There is one final point I must mention. I do not propose to embark at this stage on a general discussion of the assessment of damages, although there is indeed plenty to discuss and plenty of material in the report. But it was an important point in the report that a number of us were unhappy about the assessment of future pecuniary loss when the court makes its lump-sum award, which is all a court can do. We felt that the only logical way of proceeding in the serious cases, where it is necessary to look a long way ahead, would be to go over to a system of periodical payments. Account could then be taken of future inflation and other change of circumstance and adjustments made to take proper account of changing social security payments, which are themselves periodical payments.

There is no disguising that complicated and novel concepts are involved, but we persuaded ourselves that the problems are capable of solution. The introduction of index-linked bonds for pension funds since we reported raises just a flicker of hope that, in addition to the suggestions made in the report, there might be a fresh possibility here of enabling the insurance companies to cope with inflation-proofed periodical payments.

I am not a lawyer and I am no expert on social security. I am also very conscious of the fact that it is impossible to do anything like justice to such a wide-ranging subject even in a speech of the length I am currently inflicting on your Lordships. But I hope I have said enough to explain why I, as a citizen, feel that the present system is open to severe criticism. It undoubtedly means that some victims of accidents are over-compensated. But, more important, it means that many people suffer avoidable hardship.

Under our proposals, all those eligible could look for prompt benefits; and a large number of those who get nothing, perhaps as many again as those who receive some form of compensation, could look for relief. And, at the upper tier, tort would be getting much nearer the objective which I have always thought was its purpose, of putting people as nearly as possible in the position in which they would have been if the accident had never happened.

The cold statistics conceal personal consequences of stress, misery and financial hardship on a considerable scale and it seems to me that what the Royal Commission suggested means substituting for the present system a more humane and compassionate response to the needs of society in a world in which the motor vehicle is allowed to reign supreme. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

3.28 p.m.

The Lord Chancellor (Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone)

My Lords, the principal reply to the noble Lord's speech will be made by my noble friend Lord Bellwin from the Government Front Bench, and I do not want in any way to pre-empt what he will say at the end of the debate. I intervene solely to speak briefly, and I fear somewhat technically, on the lesser part of what the noble Lord said, the subject of damages, and damages, therefore, for tort. However, I wish to begin, before I embark on that duty, by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, on having put down this Motion, which gives the House an opportunity to debate a most important subject, and in particular to congratulate him on the lucid and persuasive speech with which he introduced it. Your Lordships are of course well aware of the personal contribution which the noble Lord himself made to the commission, and we should all thank him for that, perhaps I more than most, both on behalf of the Government and personally.

I wish also to take this opportunity, I hope with the approval of the House, to pay my own tribute to the chairman of the Royal Commission, the late Lord Pearson. Many of your Lordships will recall his quiet determination to get to the bottom of a problem and then find the right solution.

I remember appearing before him as counsel, sitting with him in the Appellate Committee of your Lordships' House, and finally inviting him to undertake this, his last great service to the nation. Apart from his contribution to the judicial work of the House, he will long be remembered for his role as an arbitrator in many great industrial disputes and his work as Chairman of the Law Reform Committee, in which in the sixties and seventies he led a complete modernisation of our law of civil evidence. It was perhaps right that his final major public task was as the chairman of this commission, which was set up during my first term of office as Lord Chancellor, and I think that I can claim that I undertook the major initiative in setting up the commission, in the preparation of the terms of reference, and in the choice of its chairman. Today I simply recall the patient, public-spirited judge, the loyal colleague, and the fine man whose last public task we are discussing as a result of Lord Allen's Motion.

Now to return to the business in hand. There are in the report a number of technical, legal matters relating to damages—not solely in relation to damages in respect of road accidents—for which I am responsible and on which it might be thought incumbent upon me to have my say. It has been thought that I should give some information to your Lordships on how these matters stand. Indeed, your Lordships might be glad to learn that, in so far as some at least of the recommendations on damages are concerned, something is, I hope, actually about to happen.

As your Lordships will appreciate, the general task of the Pearson Commission was monumental. It may be that we drew the terms of reference too widely. Its endeavours covered many fields of activities as, indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Allen, helpfully reminds us from time to time when he raises in your Lordships' House the fate of the report. The difficulty there is that not only does the report cover many fields, but it also affects the work of many different Government departments, and it has not been possible for the Government to treat all the recommendations as a single whole. Consideration has had to be given to the recommendations as they affect each of the departments principally concerned and, as my right honourable friend the Prime Minister explained in a Written Answer in another place on 12th February last, the Government will announce their conclusions on the particular subject when they are ready to do so.

I must now return to my limited task relating to damages. The Pearson Report made 71 recommendations on damages, on which, in 1973, there had already been an important report of the Law Commission. To a considerable extent, the Pearson Commission endorsed or defined the Law Commission's recommendations, and so the Government have had before them a carefully considered scheme. Nevertheless, as those of your Lordships who are familiar with personal injuries litigation will appreciate, the law of damages is itself in a constant state of evolution and has been developed, in the past at least, by the courts and judges rather than by Parliament. Any Government must, therefore, approach the possibility of legislation on damages with some care. We have considered the entire group of recommendations; some are accepted, some are not accepted, and some are still under consideration.

The first thing I have to say is that we cannot accept the recommendations on periodic payments (to which the noble Lord referred) or the modified multiplier. On the first (the issue of periodic payments), I am sorry to say that consultation has met with almost universal hostility, mainly on the grounds that plaintiffs and defendants alike prefer a lump sum. In practice, we have concluded that periodic payments would not be much used and that in consequence the elaborate and costly machinery would not be worthwhile. Similar objections were raised to the modified multi- plier. Consultation showed that the legal profession, who would have had to operate this elaborate formula necessary to determine the amount of damages reflecting the real rate of return which a plaintiff could hope to expect from a lump sum award, were hostile. On reflection, it did not appear to us that minute calculations were appropriate when attempting to provide compensation for a future and essentially unquantifiable loss. Much the same reasoning applies to the Law Commission's proposal for actuarial evidence.

One important recommendation of the report to which active consideration is currently being given, but on which no final decision has yet been taken, is the full off-setting of social security benefits against damages recoverable for personal injuries. The noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, referred to that in the context of road accidents, but I think that it was a more general recommendation than that. Personally I would support such a proposal, and personally I would agree with his comment that the original compromise had no logic in it at all, whatever the ultimate truth about it might be. The Government have invited comments in the White Paper on the Industrial Injuries Scheme, which was published last November, and am sure that my noble friend Lord Bellwin will refer to it in some form when he comes to wind up the debate.

I turn to the proposals which the Government intend to accept. I have a vehicle in the Administration of Justice Bill, which I hope to be introducing in a few weeks' time. In that it is proposed to implement the Pearson Report by abolishing the obsolete actions for the loss of services of a domestic servant and the loss of consortium of a wife, as well as damages for loss of expectation of life formulated as a separate claim. It is also intended that when the victim of an accident dies, his claim for income during the so-called " lost years " will die with him and will not enure to the benefit of his estate. This will reverse the decision in Gammell v. Wilson, known to legal practitioners, where the present state of the law has been severely criticised by noble and learned friends on the Cross-Benches.

The Bill will also include a number of the recommendations which will be of particular benefit to plaintiffs. In fatal accident claims the range of possible dependants will be increased and will include grandparents and grandchildren. Benefits from the estate which accrue to the dependants who make the claim will be left out of account in assessing damages. That will of course benefit plaintiffs because they will thereby receive a larger sum by way of award. It is intended to introduce a provision for what I shall call damages for bereavement. In the report they are referred to, I think, under the title " loss of society ", but perhaps my own nomenclature is rather more suitable.

Finally, among a number of other, minor, proposals I should mention that it has been decided to accept the proposal for provisional damages, and again I am using a nomenclature slightly different from that in the report. I think that that was referred to in the report as a proposal for " declaratory judgments ". The point here is that where at the trial of a plaintiff's claim there appears to be a risk, but still an unquantifiable risk—I apologise for the word—of a serious illness or disability occurring in the future, the court will not be bound to make a once-for-all award, as at present, but may, if the plaintiff so applies for it, make a provisional award on the assumption that the feared event will not occur, but giving the plaintiff the right to apply for extra damages if it does.

That is the measure of my present proposals on damages alone, and these will shortly be laid before your Lordships in detail when I introduce the Bill. So I can at least assure the noble Lord, Lord Allen, on my own front, that, far from being forgotten, the recommendations of the late Lord Pearson have been and still are under active consideration, and that we are going ahead to implement important parts of the report in the field of damages.

I cannot conclude my rather jejune remarks on this narrow aspect of the subject without recalling that during part of my practice as a junior counsel I was very largely concerned with this somewhat heartrending litigation, not only in the field of road accidents but very largely also in the field of employers' liability. No one who has had to handle this kind of claim in the courts, whether for the plaintiff or for the defendants -and I was fairly well distributed between the two classes-can fail to realise both the weaknesses and the strengths of the system; both the long delays, which are inevitable in High Court litigation, at least, and the anxieties and neuroses which develop from the suffering of the plaintiff and the rather (may I say) unseemly kind of gamesmanship which inevitably develops in the course of litigation, which is perfectly legitimate but does not really inspire one to a mood of edification; and, above all, the actual pain and suffering which accidents cause, sometimes through the fault of the injured, sometimes through no fault of their own and sometimes partly from fault and partly from other circumstances.

This is a subject which has profound importance to a fluctuating and almost chance-selected portion of the community; and although I have spoken in, I am afraid, the usual clinical and unemotional terms which I hope befits a professional member of the legal profession, I would not like my speech to finish without at any rate asking your Lordships to believe that that is not all I feel about this subject.

3.43 p.m.

Lord Elwyn-Jones

My Lords, I am sure your Lord-ships will join in the gratitude which the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has expressed to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, for enabling us to discuss the Report of the Royal Commission of which he was a distinguished and (as I know from conversations during the progress of the work) most active member. He has today most lucidly explained to us the recommendations of the Royal Commission. May I also join in the expression of gratitude to the late Lord Pearson, who was dear to all his colleagues and whose contribution to the law was, of course, outstanding and historic.

My Lords, we debated the report of the Royal Commission in another place in 1978, not long after it was published. I am bound to confess that the observations of the then Secretary of State were more by way of inviting discussion than throwing a great deal of light and decision-making upon the proceedings. But that is not entirely surprising in view of the complexity and wide range of the subject matter of the commission. It is indeed very appropriate that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, who had more than a big hand in setting up the Royal Commission, has assisted us in our deliberations today, in particular by indicating and, so to speak, giving a preview of what is contemplated by the Government in the field of damages.

The subject matter of the report is, of course, both vast and controversial. That has been apparent from all the comments made upon the report and, indeed, from the debate we had in another place—divisions within parties and across the Floor of the House. The problems with which the report deals are immense. It points to the stark fact that every year in the United Kingdom some 3 million people are injured and about 21,000 people die as a result of injury.

It also highlights the very small benefit that derives to those who litigate, or that is obtained from the amount spent upon litigation. The Royal Commission reported that for a social security payment of £1 only llp is spent on administration, whereas for every £100 recovered as damages or compensation in an action in the courts administrative expenses, including those of insurance companies, lawyers, consultants, engineers, surveyors, doctors, et cetera, add up to £85; that is, 85 to 100 as compared with 11 to 100 for social security benefits. Those are not, I fear, statistics of which a lawyer like myself is necessarily proud: but they are interesting figures.

Of the 3 million injuries, I million occur at work or on the roads; and, as the noble Lord has indicated, each year 7,600 people are killed on the roads and hundreds of thousands injured in accidents involving motor vehicles. As we have heard, a basic recommendation in the report is that those injured in such accidents should get social security benefits at the same rates as those who are injured at work. This is a major change and a major proposal. But it also supports within the changes that are proposed the retention of tort actions. It is the case that the two systems of tort and social security, which have been used to compensate the victims of accidents, have co-existed for a very long time.

The ability to sue the employer for breach of duty or the negligent driver for negligence has been an important function of trade unions. It is one to which they attach importance, not only because of its recruiting value by reason of the work that they do in promoting it, but also because of the provision they are able to make for their members—a matter that was of great importance before the days of legal aid. In some cases of accidents producing major paralysis or blindness, or such grave injuries, very heavy damages indeed can be won, in these days running into tens of thousands of pounds; and the ability to go to the court in such cases and to recover such damages is one which certainly trade unions would seek to maintain and which, indeed, the report itself proposes also to retain.

My Lords, I agree with what has been said, that success in tort actions is of course a chancy business, whether in industrial accident cases or in motoring cases. I remember the agony one had as counsel appearing, for instance, for a widow whose husband had been killed by a fall of rock at the coalface, where there would be a critical issue of fact as to whether there were sufficient pitprops in place in sufficiently close proximity to the coalface. A decision on a question of fact of that kind, turning on extremely difficult points of recollection and points of detail, would determine whether the widow got anything, or far less than there was paid into court. One had agonising experiences in advising a widow in those circumstances whether to take out what the Coal Board paid in or not. My noble and learned friend Lord Edmund-Davies, who was engaged with me in many of these cases, nods his head in approval of what I have said of the problems.

What is proposed by the report, as I understand it, is that industrial injuries provisions for the disabled should, in a major sense, be provided for by social security provisions but that the right to sue should be retained. The noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, indicated some of the problems in tort actions. Too few victims are compensated, entitlement is clumsy and the system is slow and expensive to administer. The memories of witnesses at the hearing, which may take place a year or two or more after an accident, about what happened in a fraction of time, sometimes in a fraction of a second, are fickle. Memory is a fickle thing. Mark Twain once said:" When I was a boy, I had a marvellous memory. I could even remember things that never happened!" One's experience in court is that that peculiarity is not confined to children on all occasions. There is the other problem of the bringing of the action at all. It often depends upon factors which have little to do with the claim: the resources of the plaintiff. If he is very poor, he can get legal aid and, if he is very rich, he can afford to take the risk of litigation. But if he is in between, it is a risky business. I share the sense of dissatisfaction about looking at the field as a whole which the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has expressed.

My Lords, the report—and we are invited in this debate particularly to consider it—identifies injuries suffered in motor vehicle accidents as of a character which ought to result in the certainty of compensation for the victims. What is proposed as the basic certainty is payment through the social security machinery. And their conclusion is in these terms: Provided that some means of financing a scheme without increasing direct public expenditure can be found, we think that the primary element of compensation for injuries caused by motor vehicles should be based on the no-fault principle". It is here that we run into trouble: the proviso of some means of financing the scheme without increasing public expenditure. The proposal of the Commission was that there should be a levy of one penny a gallon on petrol. That was powerfully and strongly opposed by the motoring lobby. It was said that it would unfairly place equal burdens on the just and the unjust, on the careful and the negligent motorist. The careful motorist is already required to have third-party insurance cover. There was also the objection, which the noble Lord, Lord Allen, mentioned, to hypothecating tax revenue. It would undoubtedly cause serious administrative problems.

Another difficulty in the way of the recommendations is that, not surprisingly, it is proposed that the scheme should cover only future accidents. Past cases would, admittedly, be difficult to cover. Yet there are, unhappily, many of our fellow-citizens still disabled from past road accidents. To establish that a present disablement was caused by an old motor-car accident would not be easy to bring about. There could be a real sense of grievance among those left out of the scheme because they were on the wrong side of the line for the purposes of obtaining benefits on the appointed day. In the debate in another place in 1978, the Secretary of State quoted a statement of the Disablement Income Group which said: Introduction of the proposed scheme would establish yet more firmly the erroneous idea that the cause and not the effect of disability is the important criterion, would create invidious comparisons"— which is what I have been referring to— and would use scarce manpower and financial resources in assessing a host of people who have only suffered minor injuries". So that there was objection of a serious kind to the Royal Commission proposals, as the noble Lord, Lord Allen, has indicated.

My Lords, my own party has not specifically decided upon these issues. Its broad approach is to introduce a comprehensive incomes scheme for all disabled people varying according to the severity of the disablement, meeting the extra expense created by the disability and compensating for the restrictions that the disability might create; but we have not as a party made any decision in detail on what is proposed. I have indicated some of my own personal reactions in what I have said.

The House will be grateful to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for giving an advance notice of what we look forward to receiving, sooner, I hope, rather than later, in the proposals with regard to damages which are an important part of the Royal Commission report. Many of them reflect and support the recommendations made by the Law Commission in their report on personal injury litigation assessment of damages. Some of the proposals are controversial. I am sure there is likely to be general agreement on the need for legislation following the decision in your Lordships' House in the cases of Gammell v. Wilson following Pickett v. British Rail in which noble and learned Lords in the Appellate Committee urged the need to reform the law relating to compensation for personal injury; and I am sure the proposals in this field will be welcomed.

It is not a suitable moment, for there are many speakers to follow, to discuss the detail of the proposals. I share doubts about the proposal for periodical payments. There is a great advantage in finality in these matters. It is interesting that in France, where the alternative of periodical payments or a fixed sum is available, it is rarely that periodical payments are taken in preference to the lump sum. As to the full offsetting of social security payments, that would depend upon what compensating arrangements to the victim of accident would be made to compensate for the loss of the moiety of social security benefits which at the present time the successful plaintiff can still retain. I conclude by again expressing gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, for introducing this debate. I apologise for the fact that I may not be able to be present throughout the course of it.