My Lords, I certainly support these three amendments so ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege. The beauty of their presentations is that they not only outlined the terrible suffering that can be caused by the things we are discussing but came up with very reasonable solutions to make the situation better. That is what we always try to do in your Lordships’ House.
My noble friend Lord Storey put down Amendment 297E in this group. Because he was unable to make it today, I do not intend to speak to it. I do not think that would be appropriate in case he wishes to bring it back on Report. I think he would be happy to support all three of the other amendments, in particular Amendment 268 from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt.
I was interested to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson of Abinger, say just now that clinical negligence costs £2.26 billion per year. That is about the same as the whole budget of the Ministry of Justice and, as a result, hardly anybody can get legal aid these days. That is a very good reason why we should look carefully at the performance of NHS Resolution. There is clearly no incentive for the NHS lawyers to get things through quickly, because they are being paid anyway. The fact is that there is no equality of arms; I have said this on this subject before. It should be a principle of justice in this country that there is equality of arms, but in this case there is not—so I very much support the noble Lord, Lord Hunt.