NHS Redress Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 16:"Page 2, line 39, leave out paragraph (d)." The noble Earl said: Subsection (4)(d) refers to the setting of,"““an upper limit on the amount of financial compensation in respect of a particular matter that may be included in an offer under the scheme””." As the Minister knows, I do not agree with the model that the Government have favoured for the redress scheme, but this feature of it seems objectionable, both in principle and in practice. We are dealing here with heads of claim. That is how I read the clause. To place upper limits on the amount of compensation available for particular elements of what might otherwise be a claim for compensation for clinical negligence would represent a retrograde move away from the principle of restorative justice. That principle attempts to put the claimant as near as possible back to the position in which he would have been were it not for the negligent action. Suppose there were caps on particular heads of claim. What would that do? The likeliest result would be to drive more people into the courts in preference to the redress scheme. It would also draw more complex cases into the redress scheme, which would otherwise be excluded because of the ceiling on the total amount of compensation. That does not seem at all appropriate. The scheme—whatever its merits or faults in this form—is not designed to deal with more complex cases that require more detailed and rigorous investigation. My main concern is for the patient rather than the system. The paragraph could result in the patient being short-changed. If you have a scheme that makes offers based on a tariff or set limit below what the patient could be expected to achieve through the court, he could effectively find himself forced to accept the lower amount because litigation may very well not be a viable alternative at that stage, in the light of the rules for obtaining legal aid. For all those reasons, the provision is both wrong and unwise. I shall say something similar later about the overall upper limit for claims, but on this subset of issues I hope that the Government will take the opportunity to think again. I beg to move.