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Reforming Civil Justice

I feel strongly, as does my hon. Friend, that we have an unacceptable compensation culture in this country. Like him, I notice it in my daily life. I think that doctors, teachers, policemen and most professional people are constantly concerned about the possible risk of litigation when they do perfectly ordinary things in the course of their daily lives. I dare say that the kind of submissions coming to Ministers are, in comparison with when I first received them, now so full of concerns about judicial review, the Human Rights Act and other legal constraints on what can be done that we are getting further and further away from common sense whereby people can exercise their judgment and, of course, be accountable to the law when they are at risk of breaking it—but only when they are at risk of breaking sensible law and might face litigation at reasonable cost.