My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friends Lord Browne of Ladyton and Lord McKenzie of Luton, and the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for participating in the debate and for the excellent points that they have made. I will study with great care what the Minister has said and see whether I can elicit from his words a clear and acceptable set of principles that the department will apply here. He seemed to say that nothing must shake or disturb the existing ways of doing things, and I am not in the least bit surprised that he has said, in his characteristically courteous way, that my amendments are variously defective, subversive or would create chaos. I am an
amateur in these matters and I have simply sought to raise the pertinent issues. Merely because my amendments may not stand up to the rigorous scrutiny of this Committee does not mean to say that the issues are not very important and worthy of continuing consideration as we reach the later stages of this legislation.
I agree with the Minister that the term “compensation” is a pretty slippery and rather sloppy one. It becomes a fairly sickly euphemism, not least in the context in which it is often used, where it refers to bankers’ compensation. Those are remuneration packages worth many millions of pounds, and one wonders what the bankers are being compensated for, other than the opprobrium in which they are held in society. I am with him in being cautious about the use of the term “compensation”. However, as my noble friend Lord McKenzie indicated, there may be difficulties in the Government seeking to have it both ways. We should consider further whether the normal rules that apply to compensation recovery, which are entirely legitimate and we do not challenge, can actually be laid over this particular scheme with its very distinctive circumstances.
I detect between the lines of what the Minister has said and from his tone that he wants to be as flexible, constructive and generous as he can be. In that case, we should certainly look further at the use of the mechanism of trusts. I completely accept that we should not take a sledgehammer to crack a nut and that it would not be sensible or appropriate to drive a coach and horses through the existing provisions of trust law in relation to social security benefits. However, it may be possible to harness those provisions to provide slightly more extensive alleviation. Whether, for example, the scheme might be able to provide a hand-out package, which is a trust ready for use that it would be easy for people to pick up and use, I do not know.
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We are talking of people who will be very ill and of family members in extremely difficult circumstances. We are talking of people who have no background in their personal lives of using sophisticated financial and legal instruments. It would be not unreasonable, considering that the sums at issue are very small indeed in terms of the department’s budget but very significant for these households. I hope that the Minister would be willing to look a little more at that.
I am of course happy that people should not receive the same money twice in respect of the same injury or disease, which is the principle that the Minister put forward. However, we have to consider whether that is actually what would happen if we mitigated to some extent the recovery regime, given that it is very hard to determine what they are receiving the money for—these generalised, lump-sum payments—and that we know that they are receiving significantly less than they would receive from court awards. As my noble friend Lord Browne of Ladyton asked, why is it right to take 100% of 70%? It is not self-evidently right; indeed, I am strongly disposed to think that it is wrong. I tend to agree with my noble friend Lord McKenzie on two of his points. We should seek to place recipients in the
same situation as if they had received court awards. I also agree with him that we should not favour the insurers against the state.
The Minister told us that the assumption on which he is working is that the average recovery of benefits would be some £20,000 out of an average payment of £87,000. That is getting on for a quarter of the payment. It is a very significant factor for the sufferers and their families. We have more work to do on this but it has been a useful preliminary scouting of the issues. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.