This story from The Scotsman finds British Prime Minister Tony Blair waxing thoughtful and concerned about the potential proliferation of liability and litigation in his jurisdiction:
Speaking amid a flurry of personal appearances, TV interviews and speeches in Labour’s frenetic pre-election campaign, Mr Blair said he had been struck as he travelled the country by the numbers of people raising concerns about the 'compensation culture'.
And he said he was concerned about the country wasting disproportionate amounts of money dealing with relatively insignificant problems, simply because a scare has been whipped up around them.
His remarks came hot on the heels of the Sudan-1 dye alert, which saw hundreds of contaminated food products withdrawn at an estimated cost of £100 million of pounds, even though experts insisted that the risk of cancer from the banned additive was tiny.
Meanwhile, the Government has recently announced that it will spend £200 million on drugs to treat a possible outbreak of bird flu.
“It is probably best not to do this in the heat of an election campaign, but at some point we need a real debate about risk,” he told the paper.
“We are in danger of – depending on whatever is the media campaign of the day – ending up spending literally hundreds, sometimes millions of pounds meeting quite a small risk, when actually that money would be far better used in other ways.
“I’m not saying there isn’t an issue about the mobile phone business, but to read some of the media, you would think you might as well chuck your mobile phone out of the window now.”
Mr Blair said that the fears of public service workers over the potential for a US-style litigation culture had made a deep impact on him.
“I was quite shocked to be told by people who were running a nursery that they were worried about letting the kids out into the playground when it was wet, in case one of them slipped and fell and they ended up having a legal case,” he said.
“We have got to look at a way of getting people protection on that.”
The PM thus joins worthies such as Lord Levene of Portsoken, chair of Lloyd's, who see English emulation of her former colony as not in the best interests of the realm.
If Mr. Blair's government is not returned to power in May, perhaps he can become a contributor at Overlawyered, where Walter Olson has just noted another case of English reserve in response to potential litigation: this one would make a good entry in the next edition of the Restatement of Tors.
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Link to The Scotsman via the critically rational individualists at Samizdata, who ask:
[W]ho on earth would imagine that a nanny state could ever develop a dumbed down society whose citizens have very real problems dealing with risks?
Which in turn reminds us of the heroic Westley's remark in S. Morgenstern's classic tale of true love and high adventure:
Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who tells you different is selling something.
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