Legal blog: Never a dull moment

Either my timing to become the President of Foil has been perfection, which would be a first for me, or there is never a dull moment. June was certainly a very busy month and I did not managed to have a single day off. Never fear I have holiday booked for July.

The resolution of issues with the Ministry of Justice Reforms draw ever nearer. Jack Straw wants to sign off the whole process rather than dealing with it on a piecemeal basis, which seems reasonable for a politician. The only remaining sticking point has been the methodology around Part 36 and the costs implications.

Lord Justice Jackson has been travelling the country with his road shows and also speaking at a variety of other events. I had the pleasure of being invited to speak at the Birmingham Personal Injury event and hopefully he will have got the message loud and clear that there is little appetite on either side for issues such as raising the small claims limit and a body of opinion that thinks he must embrace the Ministry of Justice Reforms in terms of road traffic accidents as part of his own recommendations and build upon that rather than trying to make his own suggestions.

I’ve recently had the pleasure of speaking at a Liverpool Law Society event. When HHJ Steven Stuart QC asked the audience for a show of hands as to how many represented claimants and how many represented defendants it is fair to say that the 3 defendants in the audience looked rather sheepish when raising their right arm. Nevertheless I soldiered bravely on and no one threw anything at me and I got out of there alive, just.

I was delighted with the attendance and the quality of the credit hire event hosted by Foil on 7th July. It just shows how important this issue is to insurers by the fact that the event itself was oversubscribed and the seniority of the people who were prepared to come along. We had an excellent very open discussion and what was quite clear is that a lot of work needs to be done before the industry can agree amongst themselves the best way to approach the problem. What is equally clear is that it is becoming an increasingly expensive problem and large percentages of gross written premium are being spent on credit hire alone. There are a couple of initiatives that have come out of the event which I will follow up and hopefully report on in future articles.

All that remains now is for me to hope that Manchester City have a summer of extravagance flexing their Arabian financial muscle with a view to an onslaught onto the Champions League for next season.

Anthony Hughes is president of the Forum of Insurance Lawyers (Foil) and chief executive at Horwich Farrelly.