My Lords, I was about to warmly welcome the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, to our Bill until he described my amendment as “heinous”. I do
not seem to be going down very well with the Opposition Front Bench this evening. It reminds me of happier days when I was on the Government Front Bench and met with a similar lack of enthusiasm.
I would like to speak to Amendment 79, which raises a rather different point from others in the group, although I have not sought to decouple it. The point is that claimants’ lawyers are, understandably, imaginative in finding different heads of damage to include in schedules to enable them to recover on their client’s behalf the maximum possible by way of damages. One growth area that emerged was the cost of investment advice. When the discount rate was 4.5%, there might have been some basis for that claim for investment advice, particularly in the case of large sums recoverable by way of a lump sum as opposed to periodical payments. However, the approach of the court in Wells v Wells in 1998 assumed an extremely cautious investor who invested his or her money only in gilts—ILGs. That rather removed the justification for any specific and additional claim for investment advice. Following Wells, the Lord Chancellor in June 2001 changed the rate to 2.5 %, where it remained until 2017.
It always seemed to me that, if the assumption in Wells was of a highly risk-averse investor, it made little sense to award damages to reflect the cost of investment advice on the assumption that he would, in fact, be rather more adventurous in his investment strategy. I am glad to say that this was the view of the Court of Appeal in the case of Eagle v Chambers in 2004, 1 Weekly Law Reports 3081, a case in which I acted for the defendants. I can see a potential argument being advanced that, with the change in the assumption that damages are invested using a slightly less cautious approach, it may be argued that Eagle v Chambers is no longer good law and that the cost of investment advice could be removed.
I do not in any way seek to decry the point made by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, about financial exclusion generally. However, I suspect that bulky reports from financial investment advisers will be submitted to the court, suggesting what the cost of investment advice might be. Even with the benefit of MiFID II, that advice may not be as transparent as one would like; it will certainly be expensive, particularly when intended to cover a long period. The cost of the advice, perhaps being obtained on both sides, will significantly add to the burden on the part of a defendant, whether that defendant be an insurance company, the National Health Service or another public body. One way or another, ordinary members of the public will be paying for this.
One construction of the rather opaque paragraph 3(3) of new Schedule Al, inserted by Clause 8, is that the rate has been fixed on the assumption of proper advice on the investment of damages, in the sense that advice is understood to have been taken or not taken in fixing the rate but it is not to be the subject of a separate claim. In other words, in fixing the discount rate the investment advice is understood to have been done by the Government. My amendment seeks to make what may be the proper construction of the Bill explicit to prevent an additional cost of litigation, and to make it clear that the decision in Eagle v Chambers remains good law. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on this issue.