NHS Redress Bill [HL]

I am going to do an extremely dangerous thing in attempting, as a layman, to give an explanation of the clause. I freely acknowledge that I may live to regret it. Section 11 of the Limitation Act provides that court proceedings founded in tort for damages in respect of personal injury cannot generally be brought more than three years from the date on which the cause of action accrued or, if later, the date on which the person became aware of the cause of action. That is where we start from. The provision in Clause 7 of this Bill will ensure that a patient is not prejudiced by, or prevented from, litigating as a result of waiting for the result of an investigation under the redress scheme. For example, where he or she is dissatisfied with an offer made under the scheme and therefore subsequently wishes to bring court proceedings, it effectively stops the clock regarding any time limit for bringing court proceedings in respect of the same incident for as long as the case is being considered under the scheme. That is its purpose. This protects a genuine choice for patients, by ensuring that they still have enough time to bring a case for clinical negligence in the courts if they wish. Under the clause, a scheme may define when a case is considered to be the subject of proceedings under the scheme so that it is absolutely clear when the clock stops running for the purposes of the suspension of the relevant time limits. For example, regulations might provide for the suspension of the time limit to begin once the scheme member begins proceedings under the scheme and for the suspension to cease—that is, for the limitation period to start running again—at the end of the fixed period of time that the patient has to consider an offer of redress under the scheme or, if earlier, when the patient chooses to reject the offer or no longer wishes to pursue proceedings under the scheme. That is a masterly sentence which has been constructed by the lawyers of the department to make everything absolutely clear to Members of the Committee. I suggest that probably a little study of Hansard is required, but I will undertake—and this is extremely dangerous territory—to ask our lawyers to go back to Parliamentary Counsel to see whether there is any way that the drafting could be improved even beyond its current state of perfection to help in public understanding.