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Recovery of Health Services Charges (Northern Ireland) Order 2006

rose to move, That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Recovery of Health Services Charges (Northern Ireland) Order 2006. The noble Lord said: I shall explain the order briefly. In effect, it replicates measures that already exist in Great Britain and replaces the legislation in Northern Ireland which touches on health service charges. For more than 70 years, hospitals in Northern Ireland have had the right to recover the costs of treating people injured in road traffic accidents where the casualty has been paid personal injury compensation. In these cases the health service costs are borne by the compensator rather than the casualty or the hospital. The principle is that those responsible for causing injury to others should pay the full costs of their actions or negligence, including the cost of treating the casualties’ injuries. Under Part II of the Health and Personal Social Services Act (Northern Ireland) 2001, the current legislation, the treatment costs are recovered centrally and then paid directly to the health and social services trust which provided the treatment. The current scheme has so far paid more than £20 million to hospitals in Northern Ireland for them to reinvest in frontline patient care. In almost all cases the actual compensator is not the injured person but the insurance company and the cost of the scheme to the motorist is met through insurance premiums. Nothing is free in this world; that is where the money comes from. Following separate consultation on both the policy and the draft order, which by and large have been supportive, we now propose to extend the principle to cases involving personal injury compensation generally. We propose to replicate the measures introduced in Great Britain by Part 3 of the Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Act 2003, one provision of which will be amended when the Health Bill reaches the statute book. We do not think it logical for the successful existing scheme to be restricted to road accidents. We therefore propose that in future when a person receives compensation for any injury, the cost of any health service hospital treatment and ambulance services received in connection with the injury will be recoverable from whoever has paid the compensation. This further supports the principle that the wrongdoer rather than the taxpayer should pay the full costs of his or her actions and will provide a good incentive for improvements in health and safety, for example in the workplace. As with the existing scheme, the income raised will be paid directly to the trusts of the hospitals which provided the treatment. The hospitals will be free to use the money to improve patient services as they see fit. In this way we hope to recover at least an additional £4.5 million per year once the expanded scheme has been operative for about three years. This would equate to the provision of, for example, around 800 hip or knee replacements. Again, in most cases, the compensator will be an insurance company and the additional cost of the extended scheme will be met through marginally higher insurance premiums, mainly in the employers’ and public liability fields. The order itself differs little in substance from its Great Britain equivalent. The main differences from the Act, apart from extending the scope of the recovery scheme from just applying in road accident cases, are that ambulance costs will be included; contributory negligence will be taken into account in calculating the amount of the charge recoverable; and any compensator wishing to appeal against the certificate of charges will be able to seek to have the requirement that any charges due must be paid before an appeal can be made waived on the grounds of exceptional financial hardship. In the same way as happens in Great Britain, the recovery scheme will continue to be run by the Compensation Recovery Unit, which is a part of the Northern Ireland Social Security Agency. We are confident that the introduction of the proposed legislation and the extended health service charges recovery scheme will bring in more income to spend on frontline services in hospitals, and of course by the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service, with the additional benefit of encouraging people to take active steps to reduce the risk of causing injury to third parties. We hope to see a reduction in accidents as people take even more care, whether they are on the road, in shops and offices or in factories. I beg to move. Moved, That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Recovery of Health Services Charges (Northern Ireland) Order 2006.—(Lord Rooker.)