Compensation Bill [HL]

I intended to do so. I was merely breaking up the way I dealt with the cases so that I started by giving the detail rather than their names. The relevant name is Simonds v Isle of Wight County Council.I thought the noble Lord’s legal team would have leapt to give him the name instantly; I am sure they know it. I would not dream of not giving the noble Lord that name. Essentially, the court said that it would be impossible for the school to hold a sports day if you had to do all those things, and therefore that was unreasonable. I refer to Watt v Hertfordshire County Council, which concernsfire-fighters who were injured by lifting gear when travelling in a vehicle not specifically fitted for carrying that gear. They were going to an emergency where a woman was trapped under a heavy vehicle. The court held that the firemen were ready to take the risk of using the vehicle to save life. Lord Denning said it was well settled that in measuring due care you must balance the risk against the measures necessary to eliminate that risk, and that you must balance the risk against the end to be achieved. We want to encompass that case also. I refer to Latimer v A.E.C. Ltd. This is a business example. In that case the factory floor was flooded. To remove all risk of slipping would have required the factory owner to close down production for the entire day. It was considered that that impact on the firm’s activity was not reasonable. Those are four different examples and there will be plenty more, but I wanted to set out the range of examples that we are looking at so that the Committee can consider them before Report. The difficulty with public interest is that, as I understand it, I am not sure that it would capture all of those, particularly the business example. I did not want to exclude that important example.