My Lords, I have tabled this amendment because this SI does not simply cross out the term “EU” and replace it with “UK”; it does not preserve the status quo; and it does not recreate the advantages and systems that drivers and passengers can rely on at the moment when things go wrong when they are travelling abroad. I want to thank the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, which helped to explain how the system works.
Every year, more than 2.6 million UK vehicles make the trip to the EU, whether for business or pleasure. Given the scale of that annual migration, it will come as no surprise that a significant number of them have accidents. Around 5,000 people a year make claims under a very useful EU scheme which provides that if a UK resident is injured in a road traffic accident in the EU and the injury was caused by the negligence of another person, the injured person can claim compensation in the UK. This has obvious benefits, because victims can do this in their own language, using their local solicitor. They do not have to travel anywhere to do this. The claim is made against a UK-based claims representative appointed by the foreign insurer. Occasionally, this excellent system does not work as it should, in which case the injured person has a backstop—if I can use that phrase—and can claim through the Motor Insurers’ Bureau. The MIB then takes responsibility for recouping costs from its counterpart agency in the country where the accident occurred.
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Every year, some 4,300 claims are made against insurers and 700 by the MIB. The numbers, therefore, are large: this is an important and well-used scheme. After Brexit, insurance companies in EU states will no longer be obliged to appoint claims representatives in the UK, and this SI removes the ability of UK residents injured in traffic accidents in the EEA to make a claim through the MIB. Instead, a UK resident will have to make a claim in the country where they were injured. Noble Lords can imagine that claiming compensation in a foreign country is a daunting prospect. It will involve travelling there—probably several times—and using a foreign language that they probably do not speak all that well, if at all; and it will involve using a different legal system with which they are not familiar. In most EU states, they will have to pay up front for their own legal advice and representation, which might not be recoverable, even if they win the case. If a person has been badly injured in a traffic accident, they might find it impossible to contemplate all this, and it can take years for a legal claim to be heard. If a victim’s injuries are serious, they will need money as soon as possible to replace lost earnings, adapt their house and that kind of thing.
The Government justify this change by saying that if we maintain the visiting victims scheme and the MIB compensation system, we will end up paying out money to EU victims visiting the UK without any reciprocity. That is a very good reason for taking no deal off the table and continuing the current system. Many years ago, the cumbersome system that the Government now envisage was the norm, but more than 2.5 million of us drive abroad each year. That is equivalent to the whole population of Northern Ireland—men, women and children—getting up and taking their cars off on holiday at the same moment.