Compensation Bill [HL]

The noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, for whom I have enormous respect, is sadly on this occasion, with the greatest respect, wrong. I have had experience of cases where a court was moving to declare a claimant 100 per cent contributory negligent, but was unable to do so because of the existing law. Therefore, it found the particular individual to be 99 per cent. A series of judicial decisions have been made where it was necessary to prove just 1 per cent. In order to invoke the full compulsory insurance for passengers in motorbike accidents all you had to do was say that although the rider of the cycle was 99 per cent to blame, it was 1 per cent on the part of the oncoming motorist and therefore the claimant succeeded in full. But it is not only that 99 per cent to 1 per cent line of cases; it is also perfectly possible, in my experience, for a court to decide that two parties were negligent but that the 100 per cent negligence of one of the parties, namely the claimant, was the effective cause of what had occurred. Therefore, perhaps at least he would accept my point on causation, where you can have negligence established on the part of both the individual parties, but the causation arguments result in just one of the parties being held to blame. What I am really saying is that under the existing law it is not possible to find a claimant 100 per cent to blame. My argument for saying that it would be wise to allow this is that rather than allow a case to go all the way to court to establish whether the blame was 99 per cent or 100 per cent, it would be better to have it made clear right at the outset.