Chancel Repair Liability

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman has explained clearly the problems faced by householders. Given that back in 1982, the General Synod of the Church of England overwhelmingly supported a motion proposing that chancel repair liability be phased out and that the Law Commission’s 1985 report recommended that chancel repair liability arising from the ownership of land should be abolished after 10 years, does he agree that the Government should now consider implementing that recommendation or, at the very least, agreeing to set up a parliamentary committee of inquiry shortly after October 2013? It is outrageous that people should be facing the unfairness of chancel repair liability. A few householders are facing enormous bills.

[Peter Luff]

I agree with the spirit of what the hon. Lady says, but happily, I think I have a rather simpler solution. Let us see.

As I was saying, the sum would be payable pretty much on demand and would be unpredictable in both amount and frequency. A house in such a situation would be either unsaleable or substantially reduced in value. Some wrongly say that insurance is the answer, but it is not. When someone buys a house, the solicitor should do a search to establish whether the liability exists on the property. Such searches are complex and often difficult to conduct, so after a brief search, many solicitors instead offer purchasers chancel repair liability insurance.

Such insurance is available only where it appears that no liability is registered. Where liability is registered, insurance is not available. Where there is no awareness of the possibility that the liability might be claimed, no insurance is purchased; I doubt whether many of us here today have such insurance. For most property owners, the registration of the liability means that they will have to pay large sums at regular intervals for ever, passing on the liability to anyone foolish enough to buy their property.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mrs Riordan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff) on securing a debate on the subject of the approaching deadline for the registration of chancel repair liability. I am replying as the Minister with responsibility for general land law in England and Wales.

The debate has highlighted the issues that people affected by chancel repair have to address in light of the October 2013 deadline. I do not underestimate the seriousness and difficulty of those issues, and the problems that they can cause for communities; I am, however, for reasons that I will explain, not persuaded that any change in the law is necessary. I know this conclusion will be disappointing to my hon. Friend, but I will keep the matter under consideration and will monitor developments carefully.

As we have heard, chancel repair liability is an ancient, but enforceable, part of the land law of England and Wales, whereby property owners can be compelled to pay for the repair of the chancel of a church. The liability is thought to benefit about 5,200 ancient churches, and to burden a large number of properties. Liability as between owners is joint and several. However, the present owners of the properties affected by the liability are not the only people to whom chancel repair liability and the approaching deadline for registration are important. Anyone seeking to buy a property will want to know whether it may be affected by chancel repair liability. Searches will be conducted and insurance may be taken out.

On the other side of the liability, the owners of the benefit of the liability will have issues to address. In England, the benefit is usually owned by the local parochial church council. The members of the council, who are essentially charity trustees in relation to their local church, have potentially difficult decisions to make about registration and, should it be necessary, enforcement of the liability.

[Nia Griffith]

Given the difficulties the Minister has just referred to, could there not be a simpler solution by doing away with the need to have the liability in the first place? It seems very unfair, and she has just pointed out why it would be very difficult to put a halfway solution in place. Perhaps a final solution needs to be made that actually gets rid of it.

[Mrs Grant]

The main issue, though, is that it is a valid property right that has been upheld by the House of Lords. I will say a little more about the hon. Lady’s point as my speech develops.

In most situations concerning private property rights, only the parties directly involved are engaged, but with chancel repair liability, the surrounding issues may be important for the relationship of the clergy, congregation and wider community in parishes where the liability exists and may be enforced. The approach of the deadline for registration may well have given everyone in those groups pause for thought.

In the midst of all the activity that registration or the consideration of registration may have produced, however, we should not forget the essential fact that the existence of chancel repair liability over a property is long standing. No new liabilities have been created. The registration of a notice of the liability or a caution against first registration on the land register merely preserves the right to make a claim. Properties subject to a notice or a caution are therefore not subject to a new obligation. In legal terms, in relation to such properties, nothing has really changed.

Of course, if the owners did not know about the obligation before registration, they will no doubt want to be sure that the registration is correct, but the issues brought out by registration would have arisen had the owner of the liability sought to enforce it. Failure to register may make a liability unenforceable, but registration does not guarantee that the claimed liability is legally enforceable. Whether a claim is sustainable will depend on the facts of the case. Homeowners and other landowners remain as free as they are at present to contest a claim. What registration removes is the uncertainty and unpredictability—the lack of discoverability—that currently surround the possible existence of chancel repair liability.

Mesothelioma (Legal Aid Reform)

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Bill Esterson]

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for his question, and I hope that the Minister will answer it. We could all make our guesses as to the true motives. There are well-established financial links between the Government and the insurance industry, which might be at the heart of why things are being done in the way that they are.

It cannot be right that victims of asbestos-related diseases should be required to surrender a quarter of the damages that they have been awarded to pay for legal costs. Those damages are awarded to recognise and compensate men and women who have suffered terribly, if it is at all possible to compensate them for the pain, suffering and life-shortening that resulted from their work.

Mesothelioma has an extraordinarily long latency period of up to 60 years. As well as those 30,000 who have already died in the United Kingdom from mesothelioma, an estimated 60,000 more are yet to lose their lives due to past exposure, the vast majority of which occurred at work.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the coffers of the Government, in the shape of the Department for Work and Pensions, will also lose out? There has always been a payment back of benefits that have had to be paid up front early on because of people’s short life span once diagnosed with mesothelioma. Does he also agree that we should be making absolutely certain that no part of the compensation is taken out? The money should be used for the victims and their families and to repay the Government. Will my hon. Friend congratulate a colleague of mine in the Welsh Assembly, Mick Antoniw, who proposes to introduce a private Member’s Bill that would compensate the NHS for its expenditure on treating mesothelioma by recovering the money from liable companies?

[Bill Esterson]

I am happy to congratulate my hon. Friend’s colleague. She is right that it is the companies that cause this terrible pain and suffering, as well as their insurers, that should bear the financial costs, although there is no way of truly compensating the victims and their families for their suffering. It should be the private industry that caused the condition, and its insurers, that pays, not the public purse.

People were exposed to this terrible disease at work in situations which employers knew would ultimately kill the workers. However, as things stand under the legislation, those same people and their families will lose a quarter of the compensation that they absolutely should receive from the insurers of those companies.

The Government rejected a Lords amendment that would have exempted mesothelioma from the provision, but they have yet to say how sufferers and their families will be protected. In all the non-answers from Ministers, they have yet to justify to thousands of families why they did not exempt mesothelioma.

Mesothelioma is an exceptional case, because the problem was known about for more than a century. Asbestos was identified as a poisonous substance in 1892 and has been banned from use in this country for almost half a century, yet employers knowingly exposed their workers to it day in, day out. They knew the dangers and ignored them for decades. They were eventually held accountable, but ever since the first successful case against employers and insurers on asbestos-related diseases, they have kept coming back to the courts and the issue has kept coming back to this place.

Mesothelioma causes intractable pain and severe breathlessness, which means that more than half of all the very modest damages claimed are for pain and suffering. The Government’s proposals would have a disproportionate effect on mesothelioma sufferers, because victims receive a higher proportion of their damages for pain and suffering than those who claim for personal injury.

The legislation requires terminally ill asbestos victims who succeed in a claim for compensation against negligent, guilty employers to pay up to 25% of their damages for pain and suffering in legal costs. They are not part of the compensation culture, nor are they legally aided, so to include them in that provision is wholly wrong. Many sufferers are so defeated by their illness that they never make a claim under current circumstances. Victim support groups have been told by victims that the change proposed would be a significant further deterrent to them making a claim at all. That would represent a big saving for the insurance industry, which therefore has the financial interest hinted at by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram).

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Djanogly]

This is not a question of whether mesothelioma sufferers receive adequate legal support but of how much their lawyers get paid for providing it. We are saying that that must be more reasonably assessed, and that is the point of our reforms.

Let me remind hon. Members that the current regime of no win, no fee conditional fee agreements was meant to promote access to justice but has frequently ended up as something of a racket allowing risk-free litigation for claimants, inflated profits for legal firms, and punitive additional costs for defendants.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Can the Minister tell us of one case in which a mesothelioma sufferer has taken something to court that did not deserve to go there—one case in which a sufferer from this horrible disease, which leaves them dying in a horribly painful way, has in any way abused the system?

[Mr Djanogly]

Let me repeat what I said: this is not a question of whether the person making a claim has a valid claim but of how much his lawyer gets paid. That is what we are looking at, and that is where the system needs reform. To be clear—I say that because I have heard that some hon. Members are not clear about this specific point—I emphasise that under our proposals the client’s lawyer’s costs will still be recoverable from the losing other side.

However, clauses 46 and 48 abolish the recoverability of the success fees and insurance premiums that have pushed up prices for everyone.

Sentencing

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

We would all like to see prison population decline, but for the right reasons. We would like to see a continuation of the reduction in crime that took place when we were in government. I will not dwell on the devastating effects that the drastic cuts in the police budgets are likely to have on crime detection rates, as my hon. Friends will raise that issue in this evening’s second debate.

We all want to see a reduction in crime and Labour Members believe that crucial factors in reducing crime include ensuring good education opportunities for all our young people; ensuring job opportunities for all; ensuring that everyone, including those on the lowest wages, have enough to live on; providing proper mental health services in a fully funded public national health service; and tackling issues such as drug and alcohol addiction.

As was pointed out by members of the audience during last week’s “Question Time”—prison officers and prisoners alike—when people do end up in jail, it is important that proper help and support is provided to rehabilitate prisoners so that they can be reintegrated in society. However, that requires funding and space, which was one of the reasons for our plan to provide more prison places. Many electors thought that that was also the policy of the Conservative party, and they must feel badly let down, because they now understand that the Conservatives’ policy is simply to reduce sentences for violent crime. Some new prisons, such as the prison that we planned to build in north Wales, would also have enabled prisoners to remain closer to their communities, with important consequences in terms of family contact and increased chances of successful release.

Constituents of mine are horrified by the Government’s proposals. They are horrified by the idea that sentences could be reduced by 50% in the case of all offences in the event of early guilty pleas. They are horrified by the fact that those offences would include violent crimes such as rape, and by the fact that a convicted rapist could serve only 15 months in jail. As the Secretary of State will know, in 2003 Labour introduced the Sentencing Guidelines Council, the forerunner of the Sentencing Council, which came into being in 2010 and is charged with promoting a clear, fair and consistent approach to sentencing. It opposes the 50% reduction, believing that an offender’s decision to plead guilty should not be allowed to reduce a sentence by more than 35%. It has also said—this is for the information of the hon. Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer)—that the reduction will not increase the tendency of defendants to plead guilty.

I am particularly concerned by the Government’s attitude to rapists and their victims. Last year they proposed anonymity for rape defendants, sending the message that such defendants needed more protection than others because their accuser was more likely to be lying. That was a disgraceful suggestion and proposal. It is hard enough for a woman to report a rape and undergo the dreadful ordeal of having to relive the experience in order to see justice done, without her being made to feel even more undermined because the defendant’s right to anonymity implies that she is lying. I am glad to report that following fierce opposition from Labour Members—led by my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint)—the proposal was dropped.

It was even more depressing to hear the Secretary of State’s rather flippant comments about rape last week. Particularly depressing was his comment about date rape. Date rape can involve deception, betrayal of trust, and drugging someone with no regard for the harmful effects that that can have: acts undertaken deliberately to violate the victim’s body. There is nothing glamorous about that. A rape in those circumstances is still a rape, a disgusting, despicable act. The rapist deliberately places his victim in circumstances that could be life-endangering, not only carrying out the rape but possibly even thinking, at the back of his mind, that the effects—or perceived effects—of memory loss may make the victim less likely to seek help very shortly after the crime, and that the victim may have considerable difficulty in describing events or being believed. It certainly does not help for the Secretary of State to imply that that is somehow a less serious kind of rape.

All rapes, and all violent crimes, must be taken very seriously, and their perpetrators must be punished properly. My constituents and I certainly do not want to see a 50% reduction in sentences in exchange for early guilty pleas by those who have committed violent crimes, and I sincerely hope that the Government will drop their plans as soon as possible.

Defendant Anonymity

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

I welcome the opportunity to speak in this important debate, but I am concerned and saddened that the coalition Government have proposed to give anonymity to rape defendants. I do not wish to repeat many of the excellent points made by my hon. Friends, and by the hon. Members for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) and for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who have brought their professional expertise to bear on this subject, but this is a serious issue.

Being falsely accused of any serious crime can have devastating effects on a person’s life. However, experts in the field confirm that false accusations of rape are very rare. The Association of Chief Police Officers rape lead, Chief Constable Whatton, has said:

“The public perception is that there are lots of false allegations; my professional view is that there aren’t”.

Likewise, Baroness Stern’s “review into how rape complaints are handled by public authorities in England and Wales” states that

“those we spoke to in the system felt that there were very few. A Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) lawyer told us, ‘They are extremely rare. I have been prosecuting for 20 years, and have prosecuted for a false allegation once.’ The judges we talked to said these cases occur very infrequently. An experienced police officer had come across two such cases in 15 years.”

So giving anonymity only to rape defendants sends out a very clear message to rape victims that they alone are not to be believed. It tells them that they alone are not to be taken seriously. It suggests to them that there is no point in coming forward because nobody will believe them and, worse than that, as they will not be believed there is no chance that the rapist will be convicted and so there is no point in reporting rape. This would be a very backward step. Rape has a devastating effect on the victim, with the after-effects lasting for years. It is a particularly difficult crime to report and it can occur in a wide range of circumstances; it is far more widespread than is commonly known, with some 2,000 women raped every week and some 10,000 women sexually abused.

Victims of rape naturally find it very difficult to come forward, because they are often very embarrassed about what has happened, and manipulative rapists can often make the victim somehow feel partially responsible for the assault that has taken place. Victims are very worried about having to describe to complete strangers what has happened. They are also very worried about what they know will be a very long and complicated process and about being cross-examined about intimate details. Over the years, those difficulties have been recognised and efforts have been made to improve facilities and to increase the availability of specialised professionals, but it is still a big step for a victim to come forward to report rape.

One major deterrent to rape victims coming forward is the worry that they will not be believed. Giving rape defendants, and only rape defendants, anonymity sends a very clear message to rape victims, more than 90% of whom are women, that they are unlikely to be believed. It reinforces many of the insidious myths about rape—for example, that somehow the victim was asking for it or was somehow responsible for it happening.

Victims are very worried about the attitudes they will encounter if they report rape. Unfortunately, in a report produced in 2007, Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service inspectorate has shown that a key problem in the investigation of rape cases is “a culture of scepticism” among many police officers and prosecutors. Giving anonymity only to rape defendants will serve merely to reinforce that culture of scepticism, and although the culture might be slowly changing, the perception of many women is that it still exists. The fact that women perceive that to be the culture is making them reluctant to come forward and giving anonymity to rape defendants will only reinforce their concerns.

The proposal is like giving some sort of charter to serial rapists. Whereas now when a defendant is named, other victims are given the courage to come forward and provide additional evidence that can help to secure a conviction—many such cases have been cited this afternoon—what is proposed will do the opposite. It will hamper police investigations and make it much easier for serial offenders to avoid detection and to reoffend again and again. We all know that it is well documented how such people try to get themselves into a position of trust or a position in which they know they will have the opportunity to repeat their crime again and again.

Do the Government recognise that giving rape defendants greater protection could reduce conviction rates, particularly for serial rapists? Do they realise what a negative message they are sending to victims of rape—that they, and they alone, are not to be believed?

Enormous efforts have been made to improve the treatment of rape survivors in the criminal justice system, but no matter what is done reporting rape will always be traumatic. I implore the Minister not to proceed to accord anonymity to rape defendants because it would be an immense backward step and would undo a lot of the good work that has been done in this area.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Ellis]

In the absence of statistics, one can only go by one’s anecdotal experience, and it is reasonable for barristers who have worked in the Crown Court daily for many years to draw on that experience. I differ from what the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) said about the number of cases prosecuted as perversions of the course of justice or malicious reporting of rape. That number will be very much lower than the average. That is because it is very difficult to prove a negative, and one would normally have to ascertain that the complaint was made in wholly and probably dishonest circumstances—for example, it might later transpire that the complainant and the victim were in two different locations. But it is illogical for the hon. Lady to draw the conclusion that because there are X prosecutions for perverting the course of justice, there are not that many false accusations. The two are totally different.

[Nia Griffith]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that I was quoting the professionals who have been involved for many, many years in such cases? I was not quoting the number of actual cases that might have been brought. I was quoting what the professionals had said, and they said that the number of false accusations being made anywhere in the process was extremely low.

[Michael Ellis]

Nothing that I have said is designed to protect the guilty. I accept what the hon. Lady says. As far as I am concerned—I emphasise this—anyone convicted of this sort of crime deserves the full wrath of the law and society. I am motivated here—I am sure that all Members would sympathise with this—by the protection of the innocent, and the ancient principle that all in this country are innocent unless or until they are proven guilty is a principle that we should never derogate.