My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, in his amendments. I should explain why I did not support them in Committee. In Committee, I listened to two eloquent speeches—one from the noble Lord and one from the Minister. They went carefully through the arguments about gaming and not gaming. I thought it was very interesting. I have a lot of knowledge in this area, but I did not
actually know. I then spoke to a large number of practitioners on the insurance side to try to form my own view on whether three or five years was right for gaming. I am afraid I strongly formed the view that five years was right and therefore strongly believe that the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, is on to something that would greatly benefit all concerned. That is why I support the amendment.
More importantly, I have tabled Amendments 68, 70 and 71, which are to do with the timing of the second review. Broadly, they try to bring the timing in from what I thought was 180 days to what I thought was120 days. Those thoughts were prior to the arrival from the Minister’s office of the draft terms of reference of the expert panel, which I have in my hand. It is very interesting because the expert panel is established at the very moment that the review trigger is pulled—or, I suppose, immediately after. In fact, in a section entitled “Preparation”, before the review is triggered there is a call for evidence, which asks for all sorts of evidence all round.
That raises two issues for me. The first is that it extends the period of uncertainty. There is a 180-day review period and the call for evidence period, which I assume is at least 60 days—probably 90 days—to increase the level of uncertainty. During this uncertain period, the people who suffer are not the banks of lawyers on either side of the argument; the fee clock is still running. The people who suffer are the individuals who have the catastrophic injuries. So I worry about that.
The second thing I worry about is that if I were an expert, I would not want someone else to draft my call for evidence. I probably do not need the call for evidence because I am an expert. The idea that the poor old Ministry of Justice will be able to ask for all this expert evidence is wrong. The Ministry of Justice is not full of this sort of specialist in the esoteric areas around the setting of a discount rate. I do not believe that is a wise thing to do, so will the Minister look again at the draft terms of reference? Maybe, when we have our coffee to discuss timings, we could have a short session on the terms of reference so that we can try to align this. The basic point behind Amendments 68, 70 and 71 is a desire to allow enough time for a panel of experts very well versed in discount rates to arrive at the correct answer, without extending that time unreasonably. The uncertainty is bad for the victims of the catastrophic injuries.