Examination of Witnesses (Questions 175-179)
DR JUSTIN
DAVIS-SMITH
AND DEREK
TWINE
10 JANUARY 2006
Chairman: Dr Davis-Smith, Mr Twine, welcome.
I am not sure whether I should have declared that I am the Vice
President of the North Northumberland Scouts, but I suspect that
everybody round the table has probably got an involvement in voluntary
organisations in some way or other that we probably do not need
to go into. Dr Davis-Smith, I think we have an address that you
gave that raised some very interesting issues. Mr Twine, we all
know that yours is one of a number of voluntary organisations
working with young people. I think the Government must have had
yours in mind when they drafted this phrase "desirable activity",
I certainly hope so. We would like to ask you some questions to
help us with our work.
Q175 Jessica Morden: In the speech
that he used as evidence Dr Davis-Smith talked about how
volunteers were worried about risk issues and how that sometimes
they were being put off volunteering. Would you both like to expand
on that and explain a little bit what the problems are?
Dr Davis-Smith: A lot of what
I have to say comes from some research that we have recently
commissioned when we were asking voluntary organisations, both
voluntary agencies and public bodies using volunteers, their attitudes
to risk and what they felt the impact of a compensation culture
was having on the willingness of people to volunteer and we also
asked volunteers and non-volunteers about whether risk was having
an impact on their decision and the evidence was quite disturbing.
I do not think we should overstate it, but I think it is of enough
concern that we do need to start to get to grips with this issue
now if we are not going to be losing volunteers in quite considerable
numbers in the future because the individuals were saying to us
that current volunteers were worried about risk and about one
in 20 said that they had considered giving up their volunteering
because of a fear of litigation. If we translate that into national
figures, that is potentially a million people who may be giving
up volunteering because of their fear that they may be litigated
against. Organisations were saying to us that they were becoming
increasingly concerned about risk issues and they were either
closing down some of the more risky opportunities available for
people and for us within Volunteering England that is of huge
concern because we would argue that an element of well-managed
risk is absolutely crucial to volunteering, particularly for young
people. Professor Heinz Woolf has talked about "vitamin R"
or "vitamin Risk" being of huge importance to young
people and how volunteering can provide that injection of "vitamin
R". When we see evidence from organisational surveys that
suggests that organisations are beginning to become so concerned
about the fear of litigation that they are closing down some of
these risky activities for young people to develop themselves
we are obviously concerned and we want to try at this stage, before
it gets worse, to put in place some procedures to try and alleviate
the situation.
Q176 Jessica Morden: Is that what
you found, Mr Twine?
Derek Twine: Absolutely. In the
past few weeks we have undertaken a much wider and up-to-date
survey within our own organisation and we have identified the
figures as being quite a concern to us in that 50% of our existing
volunteers are concerned that fear of being sued for compensation
is affecting the retention of themselves and their peers as volunteers.
70% of them are testifying that the fear of being sued is a deterrent
to recruiting additional volunteers into the organisation because
they see that as a very real pressure upon them. Taking into account
the last point which you asked not just about the retention and
recruitment of volunteers but the impact upon the activities,
94% of them in the past few weeks are identifying that fear of
being sued for compensation is detrimentally impacting upon the
nature and the range of activities which they are providing to
young people.
Q177 Jessica Morden: Would you say
that the fear of litigation was the main problem in terms of risk
management or are there other problems to do with the provision
of insurance or requirements to conduct risk assessments or whatever?
Derek Twine: Within the same survey
it was quite clear that there is increasing confidence in their
ability to respond to the training which we provide—it is
obligatory training—in appropriate risk assessment and risk
management, but that is common sense. Nonetheless, their concern
is not about themselves doing something wrong, it is about parents,
whether under pressure from an external third party or of their
own volition in what they receive from the media as the projection,
taking an accident or an incident as an opportunity to seek compensation
for pecuniary gain and taking that almost as a right because that
is the culture rather than taking it up with the individual leader.
We have track records within our own organisation of claims being
brought where it is said to the local Scout leader, for example,
"It is not about you and what you did in your activity, but
we know that the organisation has insurance and therefore this
is scope for a gain from a claim." That is the climate in
which these volunteers in their own communities are expressing
concern, because whether it is settled out of court or settled
as a result of a court case, it is not just the financial consequence
upon the organisation that is of concern and of course I have
concerns about that, it is the very real human impact upon that
volunteer in his or her community, with their neighbours, with
the parents of their children's friends and in many cases with
their own employer as well. So there is personal standing and
the fear of that being addressed which is causing and prompting
this issue about should I stay volunteering or will I even volunteer
in the first place.
Dr Davis-Smith: Our survey also
threw up concerns around insurance in relation to volunteering
in that three-quarters of the organisations we spoke to said that
their insurance premiums had gone up considerably over the past
few years, sometimes hugely; four-fold in six years was the experience
of one organisation. It suggested some quite deep-seated issues
that need to be sorted out in relation to communication between
the insurance industry and the volunteering sector in that there
did not appear to be any link between the existence of risk management
procedures by voluntary organisations and levels of premiums.
In terms of encouraging organisations to go through these proper
risk procedures, I think there ought to be communication with
the insurance industry to see whether there could be a better
link between proportionate risk management practice being in place
and insurance premiums because at the moment that does not seem
to be the case. I think one of the problems is the language of
risk management because it is very confusing for a lot of small
voluntary organisations. The voluntary sector is hugely diverse;
it is made up of multi-million pound organisations employing several
thousand people at one level but then very small community groups
without any paid staff on another. In many ways that is where
the real problem lies. It is not so much with some of the larger
organisations who have got professional risk managers in place
and where you can negotiate reasonable insurance rates with insurance
companies, it is at the small community sector end of the voluntary
sector, which is the lifeblood of volunteering in this country,
because for them negotiating insurance rates is a real problem
and adds to the risk averse nature that we have been describing.
Q178 Jessica Morden: In the debate
in the House of Lords on the Compensation Bill it was suggested
that there could be a "pooled" approach to insurance
and litigation. Do you think that would work?
Dr Davis-Smith: It is happening
to some extent. Going back to our survey, about one in 10 organisations
said they were currently operating some sort of grouped or pooled
approach, but a significant number of additional organisations
said they would be interested in that if they had heard about
it or knew more about it. Volunteering England has an important
role to play here as well, but the insurance companies equally
have a role to play in terms of helping particularly the smaller
community organisations to explore alternative forms of insurance
provision.
Derek Twine: Each of the organisations
even within similar sectors have their own differences, they have
their own track records of past claim experience, they have their
own approaches to the training of the volunteers, to the supervision
of the volunteers, to the structures of risk management and to
the nature and age ranges of the various people taking part. If
I look at the voluntary sector, it is possible to explore that
area, but we really would caution against that being seen as an
immediate panacea. It may be appropriate for some organisations
that have a very similar range of provision which they are offering
and internal systems, but those variations really are more than
just a few words, they really are affecting the liability of what
the organisation is exposing itself to.
Q179 Jessica Morden: Can you just
explain a bit more about the practical problems of getting insurance?
Is it a problem with premiums and getting cover for particular
events?
Dr Davis-Smith: I think at its
root it is a lack of communication between the insurance industry
and the voluntary and community sector in that the insurance industry
does not understand all too often the nature of the sorts of activities
that volunteers are engaged in. There was a high profile example
with one of the big environmental agencies, BTCV, a couple of
years ago when overnight the insurance company looked into exactly
what they were engaged in and became concerned about it and they
scrapped all the insurance to BTCV overnight. That situation has
now been resolved but I think it highlights that issue of a lack
of communication and a lack of understanding. In a sense perhaps
it is not surprising given what I have said about the small nature
of a lot of voluntary organisations because one of the ABI's own
reports Making the Market Work highlighted that one of
the main problems of the insurance industry was getting a
good understanding about risk assessment activities within small
companies or small organisations and I think that is equally the
case, if not more so, for voluntary organisations and the voluntary
sector. At its most basic level it is about the insurance sector
and the volunteering world having a greater dialogue and therefore
I am very pleased with what we heard earlier about the ABI and
their recent report directed to the voluntary sector and certainly
we are engaging with them in the work that we are doing around
the risk of volunteering. I agree with Derek about the limitations
of some of the pooled approaches, but the sports field is a good
example of where pooled insurance is particularly well developed
at the moment, they are engaged in similar types of activities
and I think there are alternative mechanisms that we can look
at.
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