Compensation Bill [HL]

I offer the Minister one more example. In a foundry in the west midlands the annual wage increase was 1 per cent less than the management had first envisaged because of the number of industrial injury claims that had been put in in the previous year. We battled it out with the representatives of the workers in the foundry and it was accepted—and, of course, the claims fell. As in that case, the difficulty is often a business decision, because your insurer is always extremely keen that you should settle, if it is a matter of a squashed thumb or bruised shoulder. From the point of view of the insurance company, the business decision is to settle and not to fight to the end.