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PPI mis-selling has led to wholesale action to reimburse policy-holders. What if the same was true of motor insurance? Paying out claims on an indemnity policy can only be legitimate if the payment can be shown to indemnify. Other payments are gratuitous. Should the cost of gratuitous payments be borne by the general motorist who has no say in it? Well, for good or ill, the insurance is compulsory, so the answer is yes. If the insurer pays, then he passes the bill on to the motorist. But has this happened? Is there gratuity when there should be indemnity? Consider whiplash. Science has, even by medical standards, emphatically shown that physiotherapy provides no foreseeable effect on indemnity. Why should the motorist pay for this? Answer – because insurers do. The bigger problem though is that medical opinion about causation, diagnosis and prognosis has been accepted as legal fact. For whiplash, this is demonstrably unsound.  The medical approach is not consistent with legal fac

Evidence from: SWD(2013) 202 final Public consultation on the new EU occupational safety and health policy framework Responses due 26/08/2013 The document confidently asserts that a central framework on H&S has been essential. The usual harmonisation/leadership argument. Injury accident rates have shown an improvement, it says, but no-one quite knows how to measure them. The impression is that some nations would do far less on H&S were it not for the centralised approach. But, what can be done about SMEs? Has anyone done anything about nano materials, endocrine disruptors and EMFs? The document focuses on the ‘soft’ issues of stress, MSD and ageing. BUT makes a special case for preventable cancer. It also confirms that H&S has been adopted by the wider public health agenda: ‘With regard to public health policy, the degree of coherence between public health and health and safety at work is high. Measures were taken in the areas of tobacco in the workplace and mental he

Evidence from: DWP 14th June 2013 A review of the health and safety executive as a non-departmental public body HSE annual budget is ~£3oom. That is roughly equivalent to 20% of the EL insurance premium collected in the same operational area. HSE have contact with 60% of employers every 3 years, insurers have contact with 85% of employers every year (15% don’t buy EL even when they should, HSE and local authorities are not always great at compliance). HSE claim to have saved the UK from unnecessary costs that would have followed from EC Directives had they not been intercepted. This, political work in addition to its main activities, which are: • Lead others to improve health and safety in the workplace; • Provide an effective regulatory framework; • Secure compliance with the law; and, • Reduce the likelihood of low frequency, high-impact catastrophic incidents. The latter two would seem, in part, to require a non-commercial solution which is independent of political influence a

Evidence from: tp97_kendrink_underwriting_new_normal_18june2013. A personal view from Andrew Kendrick – well worth reading. Published by CII. http://www.cii.co.uk/search-results/?q=thinkpiece+97&searchIn=site In particular on page 4, a plea for risk based pricing, without which the sustainability of an insurer seems more and more to depend on good fortune. How long will investors, regulators and policy-holders tolerate a ‘good luck’ argument? Comment Some insurance products have a strategic role to play in lubricating the economy. My suspicion is that these will be the focus of the insurance regulator. Risk based pricing and transparent systems for managing emerging risks will be very important to them. Margin, market share and group exposure cannot always be traded off against each other, at some point insurance must keep its promises.        

Evidence from: [2013] EWHC 520 (QB) 13th March 2013 Hill and Billingham v Lloyd’s British Inspection Services Ltd Exposure to asbestos dust occurred in 1968. Was there a breach of duty? HM Factory Inspectorate’s Technical Data Note (TDN) 13, issued in March 1970 was presented as representing the duty of care standard of around about that time. The judge (Mr Bean) regarded the generally low background exposure to be irrelevant, focussing instead on showers of dust dislodged from overhead structures. He accepted that peak exposures of a few seconds duration would be at up to 100 f/ml. Unfortunately, TDN13 includes express provision for such peak exposures. These are to be measured over a 10 minute period. Background level is critical to deciding what the 10 minute average would be. Using basic physics (CFD would be preferred) the following estimates are made: If arbitrarily set at a maximum allowable 2 f/ml background, allowing 100f/ml exposure to persist for an unlikely 10 seconds

It is being reported that the House of Lords have (23rd April 2013) passed Clause 61 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill. This will (in good time) remove  section 47(2B) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. Section 47(2) of HSWA explicitly provides that a breach of ‘health and safety regulations’ (a breach of statutory duty) is actionable where the breach causes damage, unless the particular regulations specifically exclude this right (currently very few regulations exclude civil liability). This is in contrast to the position for breach of the general duties under HSWA where section 47(1) makes clear that there is no right of action in any civil proceedings for breach of statutory duty. Most claims are currently brought in respect of both breach of statutory duty and negligence. In the absence of the former, it is expected that the law of negligence will develop to deal with situations and legal issues previously dealt with under statutory breach, more claims may be