Clause 1
Compensation Bill [Lords]
4:45 pm
Julian Brazier (Shadow Minister, Transport; Canterbury, Conservative)
I did not intend to be churlish in not welcoming you to the Chair earlier, Mr. Caton. I do so now and think we will have as interesting a Committee stage as we had on Second Reading.
I support the amendment. The intervention a moment ago by the hon. Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping) slightly missed the point. There may be a sharp decline in the kind of activities that attract litigation, but a fall in the number of cases does not show lesser willingness to litigate, it shows that activities are disappearing. That is perhaps a theoretical point.
The practical fact is that my colleagues and I in the all-party group on adventure and recreation in society—I am delighted to see my co-chairman, the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire, on the Liberal Democrat Benches, and our Labour co-chairman, the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Derek Wyatt), made a powerful speech on Second Reading—are concerned not by the great raft of litigation across all headings but by the amount relating to adventure training, sport and physical recreation, which is a very small proportion of the total. The overall statistics are not relevant.