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Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill

My Lords, I do not wish to appear conspicuous by my silence on this Bench but will speak very briefly indeed. I just want to give the House two brief citations from authorities past. The first states that the,

“principle …enshrined in section 1 of the Compensation Act 2006 … has always been part of the common law”.

That was Lord Justice Jackson in 2010. The following year, Lady Justice Smith—now Dame Janet Smith—in another case in the Court of Appeal quoth:

“Section 1 of the Compensation Act 2006”,

does

“not add anything to the common law position”.

Do we really want our judges, next year or the year after, to have to add to those citations? Nor will Sections 2 and 4 of whatever Act this will become in 2014 or 2015 add anything. That is the position in regard to those clauses by concession. Unlike my noble and learned friend Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe, I do not understand for a moment the Government’s suggestion that those clauses make the faintest change whatever to the existing law. Clause 3 conceivably raises other, but no less objectionable, considerations. However, Clauses 2 and 4 change nothing.