Oral Answers to Questions

David Mowat Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We must make some progress. I want to allow Back Benchers to speak, and conceivably even a Front Bencher.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

11. What assessment he has made of the scope for further savings in the justice system in England and Wales.

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)]

The Ministry of Justice has committed itself to saving a further 10% of its budget, or £695 million, in the year from April 2015. We are reforming rehabilitation and legal aid, making prison more cost-effective, and improving the effectiveness of the courts and criminal justice system. That adds to the savings of well over £2.5 billion that have been made since the 2010 spending review.

[David Mowat]

Many Departments use skilled professionals to deal with routine and complex matters. They include surgeons, scientists and, of course, barristers. However, the Ministry of Justice is unique in paying a sub-set of criminally aided barristers salaries that are two, three or four times higher than those received by, for example, surgeons. Can the Minister confirm that the current reforms will address that issue?

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend has identified a real problem, which we are indeed addressing. A small number of cases cost a disproportionate amount of the legal aid budget: for instance, a recent criminal case cost about £8 million in legal aid. That clearly cannot continue in the current economic climate, and we are therefore reducing the cost of long-running criminal cases—known as very high cost cases—by 30%. We are also consulting on revised models of payment for advocacy fees.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Mowat Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

Whatever is illegal offline is illegal online. Any activity that is undertaken by the sites that the hon. Gentleman talks about should be carefully looked at to ensure that it does nothing to harm people, particularly people under the age of 18 who might be accessing those sites.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

T5. The major UK sporting event of the year will soon kick off. The rugby league world cup will comprise 14 nations and Warrington looks forward to welcoming some of them. Will the Minister confirm that that event is one of his Department’s main priorities this year and outline the support that it is providing?

[The Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Hugh Robertson)]

I certainly shall. Of course, the world triathlon series is coming to this country before the rugby league world cup kicks off in the autumn. That event is a priority. The Government have provided all the usual support in respect of visas, security and the necessary insurances for the international body. Exceptionally, we have also provided a direct grant to the rugby world cup itself. It has been fantastically run. It is 50 days today until it kicks off and I wish it every success.

Transforming Legal Aid

David Mowat Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

That is a pretty absurd question, to which the answer is that that is complete nonsense.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

For the avoidance of doubt, will the Secretary of State confirm that the absolute level of savings implied in today’s statement is similar to that in the initial consultation and that we will be moving our costs in this area to a similar level as that in other countries?

[Chris Grayling]

I can give my hon. Friend an absolute assurance on that. In my very first contribution to this debate I said that I have to achieve the financial savings set out in our spending review settlement. I am not wedded to any exact way of doing so; if somebody has a better idea, I am happy to look very closely at it. That is what I have done, and this is the agreement we have reached, and it is just a shame that the Opposition do not understand that.

Criminal Legal Aid Reforms

David Mowat Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Karl Turner]

Absolutely. That is an excellent point. It is just the reality of business. Small firms of solicitors have established themselves over a long period. The hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) thinks that my remarks are amusing. They may be amusing to him, but I can tell him that the reality of the proposals will not be funny to people in my constituency who are looking to access justice.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

I am listening very carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s remarks, and he is making a strong case for access to justice with which no one, in any part of the House, would disagree. What I would be interested to understand, though, is whether his position is that legal aid as it is currently is pretty much right and cannot be reformed or that reforms are possible but the Government are pursuing the wrong ones. If it is the latter, why has the Bar Council not come forward with more substantive proposals than it has apparently done so far?

[Karl Turner]

I am not the Bar Council; I do not represent the Bar Council. It is not for me to say why it has not come forward with proposals, but my opinion is this. Why should the Bar Council, the Criminal Law Solicitors Association, the Criminal Bar Association or any other organisation that represents the professionals come up and do the Government’s job? I suggest that the hon. Gentleman goes away and reads the evidence of the Justice Committee and looks at the proposals put forward by the experts—the practitioners, the people who do this work every day. Michael Turner, QC, came up with a suggestion for making £2 billion of savings if the Lord Chancellor was only prepared to allow him enough time to sit down and discuss the proposals with him.

[David Mowat]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. I thought I heard him earlier give that figure of £2 billion, which of course is a very significant amount. I believe that it is 10 times the amount that the Lord Chancellor is seeking. If Michael Turner has identified £2 billion of savings, would it be possible for the hon. Gentleman to identify for other hon. Members the main areas in which those savings would be made?

[Karl Turner]

The former chairman of the Criminal Bar Association put forward various suggestions in the Justice Committee evidence session. I happen to think that some of them are feasible. He talked about saving money in courts. In my experience, an awful lot of money is wasted in the courts system. Then there is the Crown Prosecution Service. I do not mean to criticise colleagues in the profession, but very often defence lawyers are blamed for delays and loss of court time when in fact it is the CPS, whose staff are rushed off their feet, overworked—in my area, the service is terribly understaffed—that causes the delay. There are all sorts of things that the Government could look at, but the reality is that the Lord Chancellor is simply not prepared to sit down and discuss them. I am hoping that the new chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, Nigel Lithman, QC, has the ability to persuade the Lord Chancellor to sit round a table and discuss the proposals.

Legal Aid Reform

David Mowat Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown]

I absolutely agree. In the examples I gave, if the outcomes that were, in effect, negotiated before the cases got to court had not been achieved, the costs of the alternatives in terms of alienation, unemployment, ill-health, petty crime and worse, replicated across the country, would far outweigh the £1 million that I understand the change is designed to save. How much more would it cost us to keep that young man in the criminal justice system and to replicate that across the country?

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Lyn Brown]

No, I will not.

Even if we were to save £1 million, would that be worth the cost of losing the ability to change the lives of people like those in my examples? People must be able to hold power to account, and I fear that the proposals are a serious attack on the right of the most vulnerable in our society to do just that.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Mowat Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

What I want for our probation service is the best of the public, private and voluntary sectors: the public sector has high-quality skills in managing the risk of harm; the private sector can deliver a more efficient system, so that we can release funds to support those offenders who get no support at the moment; and the voluntary sector has the kind of mentoring skills we so desperately need to help people turn their lives around.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

T4. Our criminal justice system may be the most expensive in the world, perhaps by a factor of two or three times, and yet we continue, as a state, to pay many practitioners several hundreds of thousand pounds a year more than we pay surgeons or scientists. This practice is of course enthusiastically supported by the Bar Council, and apparently by Opposition Front Benchers. Can the Secretary of State confirm that his consultation will at last bring to bear competition and market forces?

[Chris Grayling]

It certainly brings competition to bear. We are trying to take tough decisions on legal aid in a way that, where possible, impacts on the top end, not the bottom end, of the income scale. That is what we believe in, and I am surprised that Labour Members appear to disagree with us.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Mowat Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I am absolutely clear that it is not acceptable for people who have been the victims of horrible crimes to discover, without their knowing anything about it, that those who committed those crimes, having served an appropriate sentence, are on the streets again. I intend to ask the new victims commissioner to look into this as a matter of urgency. Tragically, she has direct experience of how this can affect families, and I believe there is nobody better qualified to fulfil that role. I absolutely understand the point the hon. Gentleman is making.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

T6. A continuing issue is convicted criminals who hide their wealth or in other ways refuse to abide by financial assessment orders. Is there more we can do in this area?

[Damian Green]

As my hon. Friend knows, the Government recently published details of measures to strengthen the Crown court means-testing scheme. They include steps to ensure that if a defendant fails to co-operate with the new legal aid agency, and if it believes they have sufficient means to pay, they may be pursued for all their outstanding legal aid costs following conviction. From July, the Government will also introduce motor vehicle order regulations so that the agency can seize a defendant’s vehicle if they refuse to pay their contribution towards their costs. Significant action is being taken in this area.

Human Rights Act 1998 (Repeal and Substitution) Bill

David Mowat Excerpts

Friday 1st March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

My hon. Friend brings us neatly to the third question on the Bill: the question of subsidiarity and triviality.

To move on from the big questions of sovereignty and meta-ethics, the central argument that my hon. Friend has made, which is an important one, is fundamentally about triviality. Lord Hoffmann may be suggesting that although at a theoretical level it may be possible to resolve whether prisoners should vote, as a practical point, the issue does not really matter. It is subsidiary—that is, it should be left to individual countries—because it is just too disruptive to the international system to try to impose, as my hon. Friend puts it, a one-size-fits-all approach. The argument is that trying to resolve the issue of whether prisoners should have the vote is disruptive to the international system.

That is a strong intuitive argument and one that we might have a lot of sympathy with in this House as politicians. It is obviously not a moral argument, because Lord Hoffmann’s argument does not hold water as a moral argument. It cannot be the case, as a question of ethics, that nationality is the prime determiner of one’s rights. However, that may be true as an issue of practicality. We might want to allow some flexibility in the process for the sanity of the international system. Although that is really tempting, the reason why we should not go down that path is twofold.

For a legal system, the question of triviality cannot be relevant. It is not possible for a judge to determine a case simply on the basis of whether they think that the question of prisoner voting is important in the grand scheme of things. The judge is there to make a decision on the basis of the law. That is why we often get frustrated and often find the system very peculiar.

The classic example, which is something that I hate about the European Court of Human Rights, is the case that was brought by the man who did not want to give his name when he was caught speeding. That case went all the way up through the courts system. The man argued that he should not have been obliged to give his name when spotted by a speeding camera because he had a right of privacy and a right to silence. He objected to the fact that he was going to be fined for giving his name.

Throughout the process, the courts did not say, “This is a trivial issue. It is a minor speeding fine, so we’re not interested.” The case went all the way up to Lord Bingham who, at great length and with enormous politeness, explained to the gentleman that his right to silence did not extend to not giving his name in relation to a speeding fine. At that point, the gentleman applied to the European Court which, perhaps to the delight of speeding motorists, seemed for a moment in a majority judgment to say that the man should not have to give his name because of the right of privacy.

That case shows that the triviality argument does not operate and, much more importantly, that judges are not politicians. It is not for a judge to determine whether it would be politically disruptive or inconvenient for a particular judgment to be passed. They may intuitively, in the back of their mind, be influenced by what they have read in the newspaper and they may be anxious that if they pass a judgment that is objectionable to the public, it will undermine the legitimacy or reputation of the judiciary, but those cannot be formal considerations in their decision. It cannot be that the European Court, which by its very nature has sanctions, can consider whether making a certain decision is disruptive to the international system or undermines the legitimacy or reputation of the Court itself. Those cannot be the terms on which moral or legal decisions are made, although we may often feel that they are the terms on which political decisions should be made.

A good example of that is the question of gay marriage, which has been a controversial issue in this Chamber. It makes perfect sense for a political Chamber to say, “This is a philosophical question and we feel, for political reasons, that this is not the appropriate moment to raise it because it would cause too much disruption and unhappiness.” However, at the point at which the issue is raised and put to the vote, it no longer makes sense to talk purely in terms of public opinion and disruption, particularly in a case that relates to morals or ethics, and it becomes necessary to look at the merits of the case and examine it philosophically.

The argument for why the European Court should not get involved in prisoner voting therefore cannot be that the issue is trivial or disruptive. The reason why there must be subsidiarity and why there cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach cannot, from a moral or legal point of view, be that it causes inconvenience.

Before I move on to the fourth and final part of the argument, I will go over the three arguments about the European Court that we have considered and that do not hold water. The first is the argument that the European Court should not exist because Parliament is absolutely sovereign. As a moral principle, as opposed to a statement of constitutional fact, that is objectionable. The current evolution of British culture and the behaviour of the British Parliament over the past 20 years suggest that it would be dangerous to put the entire reliance for our constitutional system and the protection of rights on the individual decisions of a temporary majority in a sovereign Parliament.

The second argument that we have rejected is that questions such as prisoners’ voting rights are purely relative, that there are no moral absolutes and that such questions cannot be resolved in a philosophical sense. The contention is that moral arguments are simply a question of, “You think this and I think that,” and there is no way of resolving them, as if they are just a question of taste, as in the trivial example that I gave of one person liking chocolate ice cream and another liking strawberry ice cream. No; we believe very strongly that moral arguments are different from arguments of taste. There is an answer to these questions.

There is therefore an answer to the question of whether prisoners should have voting rights. It is based on whether we believe that the dignity and inviolability of the prisoner’s status as a moral actor—as a human—requires them, always and in all circumstances, to have a vote or not. Personally, I do not find that argument convincing. A prisoner is not entitled, as a fundamental element of their human dignity and inviolability, to a vote in all circumstances. That is not, however, simply a question of taste. It is a question of moral argument.

The third argument we are rejecting is that it is simply inconvenient to talk about such matters and that it disrupts the international system. That is a tempting argument, because we set up the Court; David Maxwell Fyfe essentially drafted this document and steered it through. Britain is in the rather unfortunate situation of embarrassment. We were proud of this Court, and if we wished to tease ourselves a little bit, we could point out the fact that for 40 years we rather enjoyed the fact that the Court told other countries how to behave. We felt—probably intuitively—that the point about the Court was that it would hopefully drag others up to what we rather pompously felt was “our level”.

We became anxious about the Court only once it turned round and started telling us, as opposed to foreigners, what to do—a difficult and embarrassing situation. We liked the Court when it did a good job of insisting that countries in southern Europe should have habeas corpus and no detention without trial. We became anxious only when the countries that we had cheerfully made accord with British legal norms for 40 years turned round and tried to demand that we accord with their legal norms on prisoners voting. There is a good reason to feel politically and institutionally, in terms of public opinion, that we do not like that idea and would allow subsidiarity simply to avoid political embarrassment. However, as I have argued, that is not a moral or legal position; it is purely a question of expediency and convenience, and no moral principle can be based on expediency.

The fourth and concluding argument concerns what we should do about the European Court. We should not give up the notion that there are inviolable and universal human rights, or that the sovereignty of Parliament must respect the rights of the individual. We should not give up the notion of moral absolutes or accept the notion that political expediency can override moral or legal principles. We must return to the fundamentals and challenge the moral and legal argumentation of the European Court, and we would do that in exactly the way that my hon. Friend the Member for Dover has so eloquently explained.

From my point of view, my hon. Friend is not producing a measure that would lead us to leave the European convention, but he points out that the Court’s current operations are resulting in absurd, surreal consequences. The way to address that problem is to look again at the European convention on human rights, and consider how it was drafted in 1950, what ingredients lie within it and how much latitude that gives the Court. A Court that one year ago had 100,000 cases waiting to be heard—an absurd number—needs to say no to far more cases. The Court must understand that the 1950 drafting of the convention allows it very little latitude, and that it is currently engaged with many issues that are outside the purview of the original convention on human rights.

A classic example of that is prisoners voting. The point is not that the question of prisoners voting cannot be resolved legally or philosophically but that it cannot be resolved on the basis of the European convention on human rights. Nothing in the convention provides sufficient detail or cogency to allow a judge, purely on the basis of the nostrum of a democratic society, to derive from that vague and abstract principle the conclusion that prisoners should have a vote. Such a thing could be done, but not by the European Court. It could be done by the British Parliament or by a British court, because it requires a much deeper background of legislation. In our case it would require the corpus of the common law; in Spain it would require the corpus of its continental legal system. To reach such a conclusion requires far more than the brief statements in the European convention on human rights.

That does not mean that the European convention on human rights is useless—far from it. The convention with its fundamental principles is an incredibly useful, dynamic document that is unambiguous and clear—as it should be—on questions of torture. It makes every sense for the European convention on human rights and the European Court to rule on the protection of fundamental political rights of the sort contained in that document. It is not that torture, genocide, arbitrary arrest and arbitrary imprisonment are the only issues that matter. Many other issues of human rights also matter, but those are the only issues covered in the convention and on which the Court should be ruling. That is why the Brighton declaration brought together by this Government as the President of the European Council—the statements by the Secretary of State and the Lord Chancellor—are correct.

We require fundamental reform of the European Court. We must radically reduce the number of cases it deals with and clarify its legal and philosophical basis to determine on which cases it should and should not rule. The notion of subsidiarity, which was raised so eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Dover, is not a moral, legal, or philosophical principle but concerns the ingredients of the European convention on human rights. Those things are subsidiary because they are not covered in that document. We should not lose confidence in the notion of rights and in a convention that we were proud to create and which was created by a Conservative Member of Parliament and Lord Chancellor.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is giving an eloquent defence but the logic of his position seems to be that we should not have a European convention on human rights or a Court, but rather a world convention. Is that his position?

[Rory Stewart]

That is a telling intervention. The answer is that we have signed and ought to respect and uphold the United Nations universal declaration of human rights. It exists; we are signatories to it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rory Stewart]

That is a fundamental principle, and my hon. Friend is correct to raise it. In the international system, we have an important conception of state sovereignty. The only argument being made today is that state sovereignty is not absolute; it does not trump everything else, but to return to the language that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset does not like, up to a certain threshold, state sovereignty obtains. Up to a certain point, there must be the opportunity to attempt to resolve the situation domestically, but at that point, when the state concerned has failed to deal with crimes against humanity, it is not only legal under the international system but morally correct for an international court to overrule the national Government.

[David Mowat]

May I press my hon. Friend further on his position on a world court of human rights? The logic of his position seems to be that the scope of the European court should be extended as far as possible, given that these things are absolute and not relative, as he says.

[Rory Stewart]

That is a very interesting and important question. The answer of course is that when David Maxwell Fyfe, of whom Conservatives should be proud, and Hartley Shawcross, of whom the Opposition are equally proud, brought the convention together, the objective was to spread it as widely as possible. Indeed, for more than 60 years the British Government have had as their policy an attempt to push it as far as possible, which is why the European convention now extends a long way beyond the boundaries of the European Union and takes in countries such as Russia. That is because we believe that the ingredients of the European convention on human rights are basic, inviolable and universal dignities. If anybody wishes to sign up to the European convention, we absolutely encourage them to do so. Any country that wishes to join, to sign up to the declarations and to be held to the high and exacting standards contained in that document, should be welcomed, but if the Court is to survive at all it needs to narrow its focus drastically; that is where my hon. Friend the Member for Dover is absolutely correct.

If the Court is to have any credibility or legitimacy in the long run, it cannot continue contributing to a situation where the British public end up feeling that human rights are trivial, that human rights are an excuse, that human rights are a charter for triviality, that human rights have the same relationship to real rights as “Health and Safety” does to real health and safety—in other words, that it is a factory for lawyers and insurance claims. To return to its fundamental principles, the Court needs to remember what it is there to do, and it is on that point that I really will conclude.

The European convention on human rights is not something that we as a party should set aside by suggesting that human rights do not exist. Human rights do exist, and all of us are proud to live in a society where our rights have been protected in different forms since Magna Carta. We did not use the words human rights until the French began to popularise them in the late 18th century; until then it was a specialist phrase that nobody in this country would have used. Indeed, it was not until after the second world war that anyone in this country started using the words human rights, but we have had the basic notion of the rights of man for 800 years. It is that the human is dignified and inviolable; certain things may not be done to that individual; anyone anywhere who is treated in that fashion is wronged; their possession of that right is not relative to the costs or benefits of upholding it in any particular case.

The European convention, drafted by us, enshrines those notions of basic decency—of equality of humanity and of inviolability. The problem with it is not the sovereignty of Parliament. The problem is not that rights do not exist. The problem is not that it is politically too complicated. The problem is that we have allowed the Court to stray from its fundamental job. It was given a very narrow task and a very narrow focus, which, broadly speaking, was to deal with crimes against humanity. We should therefore join my hon. Friend the Member for Dover in strongly demanding that the case load of the European Court is radically reduced, that the principles of subsidiarity are radically increased and that the Court ceases to get involved in situations that in principle, ethics or law, it is not competent to handle.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Mowat Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

We are keen to see greater efficiencies throughout the criminal justice system, which will assist in addressing the problem my hon. Friend describes. The other issue, of course, is that those sentenced to very short terms—12 months or shorter—have very little assistance or intervention when their period of custodial imprisonment has ended. There is no period of licence, and we want to look at ways in which we can ensure that people in that group, who do offend at very high rates, receive the intervention they need to reduce their reoffending rates.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

17. Whether he has made a comparative assessment of the number of claims for compensation for whiplash injuries in courts in (a) the UK, (b) France and (c) Germany.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mrs Helen Grant)]

We have not conducted comparative assessments, but we know that whiplash claims are higher in England and Wales than elsewhere. The increase in whiplash claims at a time when there are fewer reported road traffic accidents is unacceptable. The Government will consult shortly on measures to tackle the cost of whiplash claims.

[David Mowat]

The very high level of claims in the UK pushes up insurance premiums for ordinary people by hundreds of pounds a year. In Germany, two medical opinions are required before claims go forward. Are we considering introducing that here, and what other measures are we considering to sort out this industry?

[Mrs Grant]

The Government are committed to finding ways of tackling fraudulent whiplash claims. We are about to consult on increasing the small claims threshold for personal injury claims arising from road traffic accidents from £1,000 to £5,000. We are also about to consult on the creation of independent medical panels, which could improve diagnosis, transparency, consistency and identification in respect of exaggerated injuries.

Claims Management Companies

David Mowat Excerpts

Thursday 8th November 2012 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Evans]

I not only agree with that point but think that it makes the case for taking much more severe action. The flow of PPI cases will undoubtedly work its way through the system and people will look for other sources of revenue, so by the time we catch up, I fear that the horse will have bolted. For that reason, we must have firm regulation.

The problem is that there is confusion about who regulates this field. We have a claims management regulator within the Ministry of Justice, but that was set up to approve, as it were, or otherwise, people engaged in the business. It has been responsible for the industry increasing from 40 companies to 3,007, according to its last annual report. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock indicated, the regulator’s powers are limited, which is why the Government have been rightly looking at how they can firm up the process, including introducing an independent complaints process and placing the responsibility for it with the legal ombudsman. The chief ombudsman, Adam Sampson, also appeared before the all-party group. Hon. Members who were present will know that he is enthusiastically looking forward to looking at such complaints.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making good points about regulatory failure and the Ministry of Justice “kitemark”. A large part of this shoddy industry is in effect administered by solicitors, who are supposed to be regulated by the Law Society. The Government have given it particular powers, including monopoly powers, so it should be in a good position. Does he agree that the Law Society has failed to manage its people effectively in respect of this shoddy industry?

[Jonathan Evans]

My hon. Friend puts me in a difficult position. Although I am no longer a member of the Law Society, I am a solicitor of the Supreme Court, albeit no longer in practice. As I will go on to say, people in this area should be regulated. His complaint about the effectiveness of the regulation in relation to the legal profession is one thing; the difficulty about claims management companies is that, for the most part, many people introducing the business are not regulated at all.

I move on to the point that I raised with the hon. Member for Makerfield, whose support I am grateful for.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Mowat]

I did not realise that my hon. Friend was a member of the Law Society. I apologise for putting him on the spot.

[Jonathan Evans]

No, I am a non-practising solicitor.

[David Mowat]

My hon. Friend makes the point that some regulation is better than none whatever, but I am not sure that that is true: if regulation is so weak and ineffective and the public think that responsible, professional people are acting in this shoddy way, I simply do not think that that is good enough.

[Jonathan Evans]

I am not sure that the legal profession figures as highly in the activities of claims management companies as it might in other cases. For instance, in the context of the position of solicitors in injury claims and such things, he and I may well have a more productive exchange, but I am not aware that they figure so heavily in the context of claims management companies.

I return to my earlier point, which I intend to develop. For cases to come through and claims to be made, a body of introductions has to be generated, which is done through texts and e-mails. The Minister in the Lords said that he had received a number of texts, and our e-mail accounts are full of such unregulated approaches from outside the United Kingdom. It is very difficult to know how on earth people can try to stem that flow of unsolicited approaches, without the removal of the financial incentive. The all-party group heard from a representative of the claims management companies, and I challenged him on that by suggesting that those companies accept batches of introductions that may well come through illegal routes. His response was, “Well, we are in a market. If we do not buy those introductions, somebody else will.”

This is an area in which I, as a Conservative, might favour regulation. Claims management companies putting forward such claims must not only be regulated by the Ministry of Justice, but should not take on claims introduced by those who are not regulated, for instance by a professional body or the Ministry of Justice. I am absolutely sure that the outcome of that would be no more need for the Information Commissioner. The texts would dry up, because people would not send them if there was no financial return. The reason why we have all the texts is, of course, because there is a return.

Consumers’ heads must be spinning with all this: we have the Ministry of Justice, the legal ombudsman, the Information Commissioner—we have talked about his responsibilities—and the Financial Ombudsman Service, to which all PPI claims have to go, as we know. I have looked at the various representations: The Government have now proposed a process whereby complaints go to the Legal Ombudsman, while the Association of British Insurers has suggested that they should go to the Financial Conduct Authority of the Financial Services Authority. I know that the hon. Member for Makerfield understands that wealth of complication. I will only say that if we are looking for effective regulation, I have much more faith in the FCA, which is being set up under Martin Wheatley. That would send a certain message, if I may use that expression, to the industry.

Let me turn to some areas where we need to see progress. The first is that, as has been mentioned by nearly every speaker, we should not have up-front fees. The Government are in a position to regulate on that, which would very swiftly remove one of the serious concerns raised by several colleagues. My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock, whom I again congratulate on raising this important issue, gave a clear constituency example. The second is the introduction of a cooling-off period. That would clearly be helpful in the case that the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown) talked about—he spoke earlier, but has now had to go elsewhere—and in others that have been cited in this debate.

One area that has not been mentioned, but which I believe would be appropriate, is the introduction of a sector-wide compensation scheme. Something that is not widely understood in the world of financial services is that a whole range of financial companies that are regulated within the United Kingdom maintain funds for paying to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. In the past, I have criticised the scheme because the people who administer it like to suggest that the money it pays out is somehow provided by the Government. A former Chancellor of the Exchequer boasted about funds being made available through the scheme, which he had ensured were paid, as though that was central Government spending.

In reality, whether they are insurance companies, insurance brokers, bankers or financial intermediaries, all such companies, as a condition of their being regulated, have to take their place in the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, so that if someone goes bust, they can stand behind the liabilities of that individual and ensure that a fund of money is available in the scheme to meet such liabilities. One can imagine, in the context of what has happened in financial services in the past few years, that that is a real liability, to which people must give a lot of attention.

Yet an industry of claims management companies has developed. My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock rightly indicated that, at £1 billion, its income is a massive understatement. She is right because, annually, it is likely to be two or three times that figure. Surely, we have the opportunity at the moment to ensure a sector-wide compensation scheme, so that people who want to get rich quick and disappear tomorrow are not in a position to do so, because a fund will have been created to meet the liabilities that they leave behind.

To return to the sourcing of introductions, which I mentioned earlier, it would be very simple to impose a requirement not only that all claims management companies must be regulated, but that they can accept introductions only from those that are similarly regulated.

Finally, we must see claims management companies conform to regulatory requirements. I return to the point made by the hon. Member for Makerfield about the Which? report, which I referred to earlier. We already have very clear rules in place, but 12 or 14 months ago, 60% of claims management companies were clearly ignoring them. On that basis, there must be a consequence—that is not only my view—about seeking redress: we should put such people out of business and, at the same time, ensure that they have the funds to meet any liabilities they may have to wronged individuals. My view is that it is quite right that those who have failed in financial services, be they bankers, insurers or insurance intermediaries, must compensate consumers. Here we have a real scandal, in which our constituents are today seeing up to 30% of their compensation being sliced away. In my view, action is urgently necessary by the Government, and I have great confidence in the Minister’s ability to tell us what that action will be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Slaughter]

I am certainly happy to look at that. It is a constructive proposal that combats the sharp practice and cleverness of such firms on their own level, and that is not happening at the moment. I am afraid that those firms will always be one step ahead of the regulation unit. I hope the legal ombudsman will address that point. We need to look at these companies’ approach to advertisements, text messages and such things. I am somewhat at a loss as to why the Government have been reluctant to tackle this area more cogently. Again, I refer to a question that I asked in February, which is in the debate pack:

“How many claims management companies have had their authorisations revoked as a consequence of telephone or text message spamming since May 2010?”—[Official Report, 27 February 2012; Vol. 541, c. 75W.]

The answer is none, and yet we know that telephone or text message spamming is not only one of the most irritating ways of hooking clients in the first place but one of the most productive; clearly it is productive, or the companies would not use it.

The legal ombudsman makes the point that they should have a significant role to play in unsolicited contacts, whether it is cold-calling or text messaging, but it is not quite clear to me at the moment what that role will be. The legal ombudsman also raises another issue. Once a client is hooked and then effectively milked by the claims management company, how does one deal with enforcement if the company is to be brought to account but simply changes its name and directors, then disappears before appearing under a new guise? I ask the Minister to address those points and consider whether a more comprehensive legislative regime to counter abuses by claims management companies should be introduced.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) has done an extraordinary amount of work in this area and introduced a private Member’s Bill on it. When we were discussing the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 last year and earlier this year, both in the main Chamber and in the other place we tabled a comprehensive series of amendments to deal with the type of abuses I have been describing. I understand that the Minister was not in her current role then, but I know she took an interest in the Act. I was at a loss to see why the Government were not happy to adopt—other than that they came from us—what were very stringent restrictions on unsolicited cold-calling and SMS texting, the regulation of claims management companies and other areas to do with data selling. They were primarily restrictions on the abuse of road traffic claims, but they equally apply to the mis-selling of financial products. It does not matter whose legislation it is: again, I advise the Government to go back and look at those restrictions.

There is a myth around that there is a whole industry, including lawyers and other practitioners, that is somehow encouraging the abuses of the system, but nothing could be further from the truth. I should say that I have had representations from the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, the Bar Council, the Law Society, as well as from major solicitors’ firms dealing with claims on this subject. I urge the Minister, having recently taken on her new role, to listen to the voices in the claimant sector belonging to some of the best informed and most knowledgeable people, who are also very angry about the abuses that take place. Perhaps she should listen to those voices more and listen a little less to the Association of British Insurers and the rest of the insurance industry, whose fingers are all over the claims management industry. Many insurance companies own or co-own claims management companies, and many indulge in practices that are just as suspect in terms of third-party capture, and which manipulate the claimant market in that way. What I hope all Members wish to see is something that protects the consumer and allows genuine and honest claims to be made.

I was grateful to receive the various briefings for today’s debate—except possibly that from the ABI. After a nod towards claims management companies, it suddenly got on to the idea of the compensation culture again. I fear that, in their legislation so far, the Government have been seduced by that argument, despite all the evidence in their own reports and reports by the Better Regulation Task Force, Lord Young of Graffham and Professor Löfstedt. All those reports found that there may be a perception of a “compensation culture” in this country, but there is no reality, and what is needed is the regulation of abuse, not of honest claims.

The Government have pushed forward very enthusiastically in LASPO with a restriction on the ability of claimants with meritorious claims to bring their cases before the courts, across the whole area of civil litigation.

[David Mowat]

I am listening very carefully to what the shadow Minister is saying about compensation culture. To pick one issue, we appear to have a massively bigger incidence of whiplash than other European countries. What is his position on that situation; why does it arise?

[Mr Slaughter]

That is a good point. We have not spent a lot of time discussing whiplash today; I had thought that we might spend a little more. The situation is exactly the same: there is fraud in the area of whiplash claims, particularly soft tissue injury claims. The figures compiled by APIL show that 80% of sufferers of such injuries either report their symptoms accurately or underplay them. That means that 20% are perhaps not reporting their symptoms accurately or are exaggerating them. That puts things into perspective. I do not believe that a massive amount of fraud is going on, but a significant amount is going on and it needs to be tackled.

[Mr Slaughter]

Some of us may have qualifications in some areas, but I have to say that I have no medical qualification and I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has one to add to his other distinguished qualifications. We will not resolve the issue of whiplash this afternoon, but to write off soft tissue injury and say that there is no such thing is taking matters too far the other way.

I will quote one other statistic. As we know, almost 30% of claims are encouraged by insurers. I have one or two examples here from constituents of mine who had minor road traffic accidents, and who then had their details sold on by their insurers. So we have insurance companies that—presumably to make a profit—either own or co-own claims management companies, and that are selling on details and engaging in third-party capture, which of course means they are paying out money without any medical evidence whatsoever.

I am not saying this is a black and white issue. I am saying, “Let us identify who the rogues are, crack down on them and not be distracted by them from our other purposes.”

[David Mowat]

We got into this discussion because of the point the shadow Minister was making about compensation culture. Of course nobody is minimising soft tissue injuries—that would be awful—but we seem to have five times as many of them as other countries in Europe. Surely that statistic should at least have given him pause for thought before he read out the brief from the APIL.

[Mr Slaughter]

As I always do, I read out briefs from everybody, even from the ABI; I have very catholic tastes in the sources I use. Also, I think I said that fraud in relation to road traffic is an area that we need to crack down on. I am always a little suspicious when the ABI and others say, “Well, look how many road accidents and whiplash accidents we are having in the UK,” or, “Look at the concentration of where they are.” One tends to find that there is a higher incidence of road traffic accidents in congested urban areas than in rural areas, and there are more claims management companies in conurbations than in shire counties. That is probably just a truism, but there we are.

[David Mowat]

In terms of the hon. Gentleman’s brief from the personal injury lawyers, Germany also has built-up areas, and we would not necessarily expect the incidence in our country and other countries to be so massively different.

[Mr Slaughter]

I am glad the hon. Gentleman mentions Germany, because one provision in German law is that one cannot make a soft tissue injury claim—a whiplash claim—if one’s vehicle is travelling at below 8 kph. That was the subject of another of the amendments that we tabled to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act but the Government chose not to accept.

[Mr Charles Walker in the Chair]

I am not speaking on behalf of, or indeed against, any sectional interests; they are all entitled to make their points, and, on the whole, professional organisations do a very good job in this country. What I am saying, however, is that it is easy to be distracted—often when there is a political agenda on the table—from addressing the real problems and to start addressing what are not the real problems. Where the Government have clearly got things wrong—we could spend until the end of the debate arguing about road traffic claims and probably about PPI claims as well—is in extending the attack on claimants across the board into areas such as employers’ liability and public liability insurance. Some of the changes being introduced in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill—again, at the behest of insurers and employers—are appalling in the way they balance, or unbalance, power in the legal system in favour of employers and away from employees, turning back the clock, in some cases, more than 100 years. However, I may be going beyond the subject of the debate.

I will not detain hon. Members any further, because there is a reasonable degree of consensus on the problems we need to address. I suspect there is also a reasonable degree of consensus—Government Back Benchers may be slightly less confrontational about the way they express this—about the fact that the MOJ needs to do more to tackle what is a very common problem for all our constituents.