Compensation Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the noble Lord in his second bite of the cherry—not the tree. Noble Lords will be thrilled to hear that I am not going to get into trees. I say through the pages of Hansard that I do not need any letters from tree lovers because I fully support all our environmental concerns, especially trees. I loved the idea of an impulsive legal move because I do not think of such moves as that. It certainly has not been my experience, but then I am not a lawyer and know little about it. I want to talk about Amendment No. 13. Although the noble Lord keeps saying that we are not debating it, he has grouped it with Amendment No. 3 so I shall talk about it. I am getting confused about what we shall be moving on to, so please let me do that, otherwise I shall completely lose the plot, which may or may not be a disaster. I want to begin by explaining where we got ““desirable activity”” from. The noble Lord is right. His legal experts, who I have had the pleasure of meeting and who are extremely expert, will rightly have spent days and nights trawling through to see whether ““desirable activity”” has previously been used. To my knowledge, it has not. That was a deliberate move. I want to explain the background to that in the context that no one is wedded to a particular phrase. It was the phrase that we thought best dealt with the situation before us. In the approach the courts have taken, we wanted to take into account the end to be achieved or the nature of the activities giving rise to the risk. In particular, the wider social value of activities, which concerned the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, and when you assess what precautions or other steps against the risk would be reasonable. The noble Earl spoke about how young people when growing up need to learn about risk. I agree with him, although as a mum I am always extremely nervous when my children are doing risky activities. I am nervous and I do not want them to fall and hurt themselves. Therefore, I want the provision to be within the context of providing as much safety as possible. You are always trying to balance the desire for young people to develop skills and make judgments in both physical and mental ways and the recognition that there is not the certainty that we led them to believe there was when they are small. They need to learn that as they develop and grow older and we must ensure that we have got the balance right. That is a very clear part of what we are trying to do. What phrase might encompass that? We looked at the different kinds of cases that have arisen. These cases are far more familiar to the lawyers in the Committee and to the advisers than they are to me. However, I shall say what I can about four cases. In view of my experience the one I remember best is Leonard v Girl Guide Association,which concerns agirl who burnt her leg while cooking sausages at a girl guide camp. That case has a variety of interpretations. Some people claim that the incident happened on a different night and in a different place. In finding that the claimant had received the relevant instruction and considering her age and previous experience, the judge concluded that there had been no negligence. He also said that girl guide camps should be an enjoyable experience for all, should offer good supervision and should aim to teach and inform the young and encourage a level of responsibility in them. We want to encompass that sentiment. We also want to encompass the case where a mum takes a child away from the school sports day to have a picnic, instructs the child to walk back into the school grounds but the child goes off to the swings, falls off and hurts himself or herself. The courts have said that playing fields cannot be made hazard free and that it would be unreasonable to impose a duty on schools to fence off the swings, warn parents of the hazards of unsupervised playing and so on. In other words, it would be—