My Lords, Amendment 58 and the others to which I will speak would alter the timing of the review of the discount rate, as set out in the Bill. Amendment 58 seeks to cut the timing of the start of that review from within 90 days of commencement to nil. Amendment 72, which I am afraid appears in another group but is worth talking about now, says that the review period will be 180 days. Amendment 94, which interferes with the commencement part of the Bill in Clause 11, says that commencement will be on the day that the Bill passes and not just when the Secretary of State decides to publish regulations. I am trying to cut down the timing of the first review appearing from 270 days plus however long it takes for the Secretary of State to commence the Bill to 120 days flat from the Bill passing.
The reason is simple. It is found in the latest annual report of NHS Resolution, which makes it clear that moving the discount rate from plus 2.5% to minus 0.75% has meant that the cost of medical negligence to the NHS, every year, will be an extra £1.2 billion. That means that every day £3.3 million is not being spent on the NHS front line. If the rate does not go all the way back to 2.5%, but is like the rate in France of 1%, that adds up to £2 million a day. So that is somewhere between £2 million and £3 million a day, which is quite a lot of money. That is why am trying to cut the review period from 270 days-plus down to 120 days. I hope the people in charge of getting the discount rate review done have on their desks, in front of their screens, a Post-it note saying, “I need to get this done quickly. It is costing the NHS £2 million to £3 million a day”. In a nutshell, that is the reason for this set of amendments.
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