Daily briefing: Wednesday - Pressure in the dock

This morning’s Supreme Court decision, which means insurers will must continue to pay compensation to those diagnosed with pleural plaques, is a blow to the industry.

The Supreme Court was on tricky constitutional ground in weighing up AXA’s application to overturn the Scottish Parliament legislation.

It was believed to be the first time since its foundation that the Court had been asked to overturn a piece of devolved government legislation. To overturn the decision of a democratically elected body would be a big call for even the UK’s most eminent judges.

The verdict will be disappointing for insurers. But, according to Insurance Times’s legal sources, there was some resignation about the likely outcome. The case is expected to go to the European Court, which is better placed for a final appeal. This show looks like it will run and run.

The Jack Straw Show gets heated

Speaking of which, the Jack Straw referral fee roadshow pitched up in the House of Commons yesterday. This time, the ex-justice secretary was giving evidence to the House of Commons Transport Select Committee, which had decided to reopen its inquiry into the cost of motor insurance with a one-off evidence session.  

Straw is known for being popular in the House of Commons, but ex-Labour MP turned access to justice campaigner Andrew Dismore is unlikely to figure on his Christmas card list this year. The two men may have shared the same parliamentary benches for much of the last decade and a half, but there seemed little love lost between them when they appeared alongside one another at yesterday’s hearing.

At one point, Straw dismissed Dismore’s defences of referral fees as ”self-serving nonsense”. In an aside a few moments later, muttered but audible from the press bench, Straw used distinctly less parliamentary language to his erstwhile fellow MP.  

The Blackburn MP also clearly bridled at personal injury lawyer John Spencer’s suggestion that referral fees were too important a topic to be the subject of cheap political point scoring. “Who’s making cheap political points?” shot back Straw immediately.  

The men under pressure

AXA UK chief executive Paul Evans did his best to keep his distance from the political rough and tumble when presenting his evidence alongside Straw and Dismore. But he came under pressure too from the MPs, namely over his company’s decision to accept income from what he described as an “immoral” source until earlier this year. In what he described as a “difficult admission”, Evans told the MPs that the decision to take referral fees had been taken by his predecessors in AXA.  

But the man under greatest pressure yesterday was justice minister Jonathan Djanogly. Labour committee member Tom Harris highlighted newspaper stories, published that morning, that detailed how civil servants in the Ministry of Justice had told insurer representatives that they were pushing at an “open door” with their efforts to scrap referral fees.  

In a clearly pre-prepared statement, Djanogly told the committee that the insurance industry was not receiving special treatment and that his officials had held meeting with both defendant and claimant representatives.

An end to text pests?

More welcome news for the industry was Djanogly’s statement that the Ministry of Justice is making progress in its efforts to persuade the mobile phone networks to curb access to ‘text pest’ claims companies.  

Not a great deal more light therefore about the government’s plans, but a lot of heat. Many in the industry may not like it, but there’s little doubt that the Jackson Review is set to remain a political football.