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Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, Motion F contains Amendment 32, which seeks an exemption from Clauses 43, 45 and 46 for industrial disease claims. The Government cannot accept this very broad exemption to the provisions in Part 2, and the House of Commons has agreed with our position. The suggested exemption is very wide and would cover all manner of conditions, including relatively minor problems that may be better resolved outside the courtroom. I take the point that there are all types of industrial disease claims with special factors. Where these exist, we can take specific actions, as I outlined earlier when speaking about mesothelioma, but industrial disease is potentially a very wide category, and I am not persuaded that it would be fair to treat the class of industrial disease claims differently from other types of personal injury claim. This may be of little comfort to individual victims of industrial disease, but we need to consider the integrity of the legal system as a whole and fairness between different claimants. For all the sympathy that we have for sufferers of any industrial disease and the desire of all of us to make the legal process easier, particularly for those facing terminal illness, I cannot see that a system based on exceptions would be fair to other claimants. I fear that we would be failing in the wider duty of fairness in legal proceedings, which, as I mentioned in the earlier debate, is the key element behind the Jackson reforms. I urge the noble Lord not to insist on his amendment. I beg to move. Motion F1 (as an amendment to Motion F) Moved by