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Mr. Swayne : The Minister, in his opening remarks, provided us with a powerful argument for voting against his motion. He said that if we did not disagree with the Lords, or if subsequently the Lords insisted on their amendments, he would withdraw the Bill. Although I agree with the hon. Member for Dunfermline, West (Rachel Squire) that there are many good things in the Bill, I feel that on balance it is a rip-off—a bad package—and I therefore would not mind if the Minister did withdraw it. The critical argument is that advanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier): in financial terms, the Bill amounts to a diminution of the present package.
The Minister has said that as a consequence of the change in the balance of probabilities involved in decisions on claims, there will be a reduction in the number of people achieving a settlement. That is also the clear implication of what Lord Bach said in the other place. When I raised that point in Committee, the Minister said what he has said once this afternoon: "No—this will not take effect until April next year." The reality is, though, that we judge what will happen in the future on the basis of what has happened in the past, so Lord Bach is right. There are undoubtedly people who have secured pensions and settlements which, had they brought their cases after April next year, would not be secured. It is right for us to ask whether that is fair, given that the settlements sought were proper.
I know of people who have secured awards on the basis of Gulf war syndrome, which would not be secured according to the new test. A whole category of settlements would fall at the first fence—they would be ruled out for being out of time. As the Minister has already been told, unless he can tell us that all those people have been given awards unfairly and improperly in the past, we should not be prepared to countenance a change that I consider absolutely unacceptable.
Many of my constituents have benefited from the existing test. I have yet to learn of one who should not have received an award, and until such information is
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produced I cannot countenance any change. I believe that, on the merits of the amendment, we should not disagree with the Lords. As for the new test presented by the Minister today—that if we do not do his will, he will withdraw the Bill—that is itself a powerful reason for disagreeing with the Minister.
Mr. Caplin: I welcome this debate and will try to be brief in my summing up. First, let me congratulate the hon. Member for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed) on becoming a grandfather. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] That has prompted agreement throughout the House, of which we have seen little this afternoon.
Let me also pay tribute to all our forces, wherever they are serving today. Both regulars and reservists are doing a job whose difficulty we recognise. On that, too, there is agreement throughout the House. The hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) asked whether a reservist would be compensated for injury or illness. The test is whether the injury or illness is due to service; pay is not a determinant.
I hope that I can reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West (Rachel Squire). We have calculated the compensation scheme carefully so that more people who are more seriously disabled will receive benefit. I consider that to be social justice, a value shared by members of my party—although I do not exclude other parties; the Liberal Democrats are welcome to share some of our values.
Securing more compensation for those who are more seriously disabled is essential. If we take money out just in connection with the burden of proof—I shall deal shortly with the point about the Select Committee—it is likely that other parts of the compensation package will suffer.
My hon. Friend also made a point about records. Let me repeat what I said at the outset, namely, that we recognise that it would be unreasonable to ask the claimant to obtain evidence relating to his claim held in his official service records—"his" also meaning "her". The scheme rules will therefore impose a duty on the Secretary of State to make available to the claimant such evidence on request. I hope that on the basis of that, along with my commitment to the Select Committee that we would take responsibility for lost or inadequate medical records, my hon. Friend will accept that we have made considerable progress.
Mr. Gerald Howarth : As the hon. Member for Dunfermline, West (Rachel Squire) pointed out, this is essentially an enabling Bill. Very little of its content enshrines provisions in law. I hope that, for the benefit of the courts, the Minister will make clear that this constitutes an obiter dicta, and that he may therefore be cited as having given an undertaking to the House today.
Mr. Caplin: This is not the first occasion on which the hon. Gentleman has heard me give such undertakings. I gave them in both the Standing Committee and the Select Committee. The good news for some Members is that we shall revisit many of the issues during the secondary legislation phase, which I hope will begin once the Bill has been given Royal Assent.
Let me reassure my hon. Friend and the House that we gave careful consideration to the alternative formula suggested by the Select Committee. It proposed a
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change to the standard of proof, but offered no compromise on the key cost driver of burden of proof. Although it appeared at first sight to be offering a compromise overall, on closer study that turned out not to be the case. The claimant would not be required to prove his or her case and the ultimate burden of proof would remain with the Secretary of State. We have no detailed costing, but we are satisfied that the Committee's proposal would not change the position sufficiently to make it affordable. I am not referring to the amendment proposed in the Lords with the support of the Royal British Legion; we have costed that and it, too, is not affordable.
Mr. Howarth: Given that a clear compromise was proposed by the Select Committee, why did the Minister's Department not undertake an examination of the costs? It costed everything except the one compromise that might have secured agreement on the Floor of the House.
Mr. Caplin: I think that the hon. Gentleman is becoming over-excited. I have made clear the difference between the Select Committee's proposal and what we actually looked at. We took it away and studied it, and had we been able to cost it we would have done so. The key point about Lords amendment No. 1 is that it is not the same as the Select Committee's suggestion.
The hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth) asked me earlier why I did not share the new figure with the Royal British Legion. Call me old-fashioned, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I thought that sharing it with the House first was an appropriate act for a parliamentarian. I am very happy to come here today and to share, first, with the House of Commons our calculation of £300 million, which is the right and proper thing to do. I will share the details relating to that figure with the RBL, and I also intend to write to the hon. Members for Aldershot and for South-East Cornwall and to the Select Committee about them.
I have explained why it remains the Government's strongly held view that the "beyond reasonable doubt" standard of proof supported by the Lords is not appropriate to a no fault compensation scheme and is out of line with current good practice, which shows that evidence-based decisions that are based on a "balance of probability" standard of proof are indeed the norm. The important fact is that the new scheme has been designed to admit all reasonable claims, including those that will, for good reasons, fall outside the time limit. The reassuring message that I can give to the House is that the Government are confident that no claim will fail where there is reasonable evidence that injury, ill health or death is due to service.
I want to touch briefly on the RBL's claim, which was widely quoted in the House of Lords in particular, that it expects some 60 per cent. of claims successfully made under current arrangements to fall under the new scheme's rules. Indeed, the hon. Member for Canterbury made a broadly similar point. After some initial doubts as to whether a review of this analysis would help us to resolve the disagreement, I wrote to the RBL about the analysis and asked my officials to follow up the letter. The RBL has now withdrawn its offer to allow the Ministry of Defence to look at how it arrived at this very high failure rate, having concluded, I think,
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that we are not genuinely open to change. I want to take this opportunity to reassure the RBL that that is not the case, and to reiterate my offer, which I made in my original letter, to consider further its analysis.
Mr. Brazier: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Caplin: I will not give way because I want to conclude.
For the moment, however, as we have not been given sufficient sight of the RBL's work, we must retain our concern that the study did not provide a sound analysis of how past claims would fare under the new scheme.
Those who argue that it is appropriate to have the war pension scheme arrangements, or something even more generous, in the new compensation scheme, have a duty to explain to the taxpayer why they consider it reasonable to spend an additional £300 million over 10 years. Indeed, the hon. Member for Aldershot should explain that to the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), who doubtless does not know what he is up to today in budgetary terms.
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