Asked by: Lord Colwyn (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what the expected timescales are for introducing legislation to amend the Damages Act 1996 with regard to how the discount rate is set.
Answered by Lord Keen of Elie - Shadow Minister (Justice)
On 30 November the Justice Select Committee published the report of its pre-legislative scrutiny inquiry into the draft legislation on the personal injury discount rate published by the Ministry of Justice on 7 September (Cmnd 9500).
The Government will respond to the Committee’s conclusions and other comments received on the draft legislation and set out its views on the way forward, including in relation to the introduction of legislation, within two months of the publication of the Committee’s report.
Asked by: Lord Colwyn (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what action has been taken in response to the Lord Justice Jackson review on fixed recoverable costs.
Answered by Lord Keen of Elie - Shadow Minister (Justice)
The Government is committed to ensuring that the costs of litigation are proportionate. As part of this, we are considering Lord Justice Jackson’s report on extending fixed recoverable costs (FRC) in civil cases, published on 31 July 2017. We are grateful to Lord Justice Jackson for his expertise and industry in compiling his report.
We announced at the Public Accounts Committee hearing on 16 October 2017 that we have already accepted his recommendation to commission the Civil Justice Council to devise a bespoke process and set of FRC for clinical negligence cases up to £25k damages.
We will set out the way forward on the rest of the recommendations shortly.
We will consult before implementing any changes.
Asked by: Lord Colwyn (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they intend to increase the small claims track threshold for clinical negligence cases in medical and dental practice.
Answered by Lord Keen of Elie - Shadow Minister (Justice)
The Government announced on 23 February 2017 that it intends to increase the small claims track limit for personal injury claims from £1,000 to £5,000 for road traffic accident related claims, and to £2,000 for all other personal injury claims (including clinical negligence). These reforms will be taken forward through secondary legislation.
These planned increases are part of a package of reforms, other elements of which will be taken forward in the Civil Liability Bill which the Government announced in the Queen’s Speech. Details of these reforms were set out in the Government’s response to the ‘Reforming the Soft Tissue Injury (‘whiplash’) Claims Process consultation - https://consult.justice.gov.uk/digital-communications/reforming-soft-tissue-injury-claims.