I am extraordinarily grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his prompt rising, as it were, from a sedentary position. My Amendment 42A is in this group. On the Bill as a whole, in Clause 4 the Government seem to recognise the problem of what are called “pre-med offers”, yet fail to ensure that they are sufficiently discouraged. We are in the same territory here but perhaps not seeking to approach it in the
same way. My understanding is that such offers are made to people sometimes at a point of vulnerability following injury and sometimes, it has to be said, in the most cynical of circumstances—when sick pay runs out and after putting in a denial, which, although clearly weak, sometimes worries people.
Lawyers for claimants have a professional duty to put an offer to their client. There are many circumstances in which desperate people ignore the advice to reject that comes with that offer and accept what is offered, however inappropriate the sum is to the injuries that they have suffered. Pre-med offers are not made to be fair or reasonable. The offers are often made by defending insurers to get rid of a case cheaply, and I quite accept that the Government are right to seek to prohibit them. The consequence of acceptance in the absence of a medical report is that if the injured person later develops conditions arising from the accident, they will of course fall back on the NHS to support them. They will have no compensation to get treatment and the cost will fall more widely on society and the taxpayer. Meanwhile, the insurer for the guilty party who caused the injury will have walked away having saved money.
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Everything is left to regulation. My amendment suggests that what has been raised in this House today should have consequences in the Bill for those who exploit the vulnerable and continue to make pre-med offers. Quite simply, the amendment says that those who flout the intention of the clause should face the consequences. Any agreement to settle a personal injury claim without a medical report should be void, and any payment made should be treated as an interim payment towards what they should properly have received had they not been conned—I use that word as we have heard a lot about scamming today—into undersettling their claim. I have added the words,
“except that the court may not order the claimant to repay”,
to avoid interminable litigation, as it has been suggested that there is a problem with loose wording. If the court cannot order repayment, insurers and their lawyers will not bother litigating on the issue.
The Government want to take away free legal help from, we think, about 90% of people injured on the roads and at work. That is a terrible situation and we ought to act as best we can against the insurers. I hope that the Minister will take this issue seriously. It is clearly on the Government’s radar, but we do not think they are approaching it in quite the right way.