Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-107)
DEPARTMENT FOR
BUSINESS, ENTERPRISE
AND REGULATORY
REFORM
22 OCTOBER 2007
Q100 Mr Bacon: It was not about the
payments that you were making to those solicitors firms?
Ian McKenzie: No. Correct.
Q101 Mr Bacon: So, you do not have
legal advice that says, "These law firms have over-charged
you, the Government, and you can get some of it back?"
Ian McKenzie: Well, we have:
we have a court ruling.
Q102 Mr Bacon: Saying?
Ian McKenzie: The recruitment
exercise—the £100 million to which we have referred
several times—relates to the tariff that we were paid for
the handling of fast-track cases. We pursued it through the courts
for more than two years to reach a tariff that we felt was acceptable,
and that was the court ruling that Mrs Justice Caroline Swift
made in April. That is the ruling that we use to recover the money.
Q103 Mr Bacon: The basis of it was
that the fast-track scheme had much lower procedural costs, and
therefore that the solicitors should not have been charging as
much?
Ian McKenzie: Exactly.
Q104 Mr Bacon: Which raises the question,
given that you knew that the fast-track scheme was fast-track,
swifter and lower-cost, why you did not—at the time—say
to the solicitors, "Hey folks, for these faster, swifter,
lower-cost schemes, we will expect a lower bill?"
Chairman: All right. Mr Bacon
is out of time, so can we issue a note on that please? Mr Mitchell.
[17]
Q105 Mr Mitchell: I cannot help contrasting
the sums handed out here to miners with the niggardly sums that
went to fishermen in compensation for loss of earnings and jobs
in Icelandic waters, and, more important, in industrial compensation
cases. It has been very difficult to get any industrial compensation
for any of the diseases and disabilities inflicted by fishing,
particularly white finger, which is not even recognised as a disease
of fishing. That is just a rhetorical point, but there is a real
grievance there. Can you think of any compensation scheme handled
by any Government where the administration costs—£2.3
billion, mainly in the form of payments to miners' legal representatives—are
more than half of the compensation that is handed out, which was
£4.1 billion? Is that record equalled in any other scheme?
Sir Brian Bender: I cannot
answer that. I do not know the answer to that question. I referred
earlier to some more figures from the Association of British Insurers
for the cost of handling their claims overall.
Q106 Mr Mitchell: Do you think that
it is unlikely?
Sir Brian Bender: It is a
very big scheme with very big numbers. It is also, as a Member
of the Committee said earlier, the biggest ever industrial injury
compensation scheme.
Q107 Mr Touhig: One very brief point.
Can you tell us, Sir Brian, how many solicitors were in partnership
with the claims handlers? Can you also tell us whether you have
seen copies of the agreements that claimants were expected to
sign with the claims handlers? The agreements that I have state
that the claims handlers would meet all legal and medical costs.
They were being met by the taxpayer. Solicitors were aware of
that. That was the point that I was trying to get across earlier
and, to me, it seems flawed. Could you investigate it a bit further
and come back to us on it?
Sir Brian Bender: I will
do. 18
Chairman: Well, that concludes our
hearing, Sir Brian. It was clear to me at the start—Mr Touhig
has rightly underlined this point—that this is a good scheme
in terms of how it has helped miners. However, having said that,
although it was clear to me that the planning was poor and that
miners have suffered in terms of the long wait—some even
died before they could receive any money—what has come out
of the hearing and has been underlined this afternoon is the scandalous
profiteering on the part of some solicitors on the back of the
taxpayer. That is something that is not acceptable to us and we
want to use our Report to drive home to those solicitors that
such behaviour will not be acceptable in future.
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