Ambitious wish list fits the bill

How do you go from a 112-page manifesto - probably the longest and most detailed in UK political history - with little or no mention of legislation affecting the insurance industry to a Queen's Speech littered with propositions with an impact on insurance?

Some of the propositions do not come as a surprise as they were already in the pipeline. These include the Road Safety Bill, with the next tranche of tougher penalties for uninsured driving, and the Fraud Bill, which should generate some interesting debate around its proposed new offence of obtaining services dishonestly. At the moment, it does not mention insurance fraud but it is quite possible that attempts will be made during its parliamentary passage to make this a specific offence.

Other measures may not have been entirely expected but are nevertheless very welcome. The Compensation Bill will put into action some of the fine words about tackling the compensation culture that were fired off by various Labour ministers. The Regulation of Financial Services Bill, which will catch home-reversion schemes in the statutory regulatory net, was beginning to look horribly like the next mis-selling scandal.

In draft form, the Legal Services Bill is the vehicle for regulating claims management firms and introducing a proper complaints system. The industry needs to lobby hard to get this further up the political agenda because, without a clampdown on the 'ambulance-chasing' incompetents at large, it is hard to see how the slide towards a compensation culture can be arrested.

Labour, of course, has caught a mild dose of the deregulation bug and has also included a Regulatory Reform Bill in its programme to enact a lot of the proposals in the Hampton Review, but this is unlikely to diminish current regulation.

Also worth watching will be the NHS Redress Bill, which will set up a new authority to allow patients to claim compensation for medical errors. It will be very interesting to see if this rekindles the debate about no-fault liability. It is rumoured that the government is prepared to offer this for medical accidents affecting children. If so, that could be the first step to a wholesale reform of liability law.