Less reliably entertaining than their Edinburgh Festival counterparts, ABI fringe events can nonetheless throw up the odd surprise. The odd surprise at the ABI’s Labour Party Conference fringe event this week was the unedifying spectacle of neck-tie spurning shadow justice spokesbeing Sandy Slaughter brutally kicking his hosts in the teeth.
Slaughter dismissed the idea that insurers are losing money in the motor market. Look at Admiral, he suggested for some obscure reason. He pooh-poohed the idea of tampering with the law of the land to help nurse fat cat insurers happily back into profit.
“We should not be seeking to subsidise an industry that is not operating terribly well,” he declared starkly. Insurers, he said “should put their own house in order before we make major changes to the system of justice” (presumably a fancy name for the justice system).
A report in this week’s Insurance Times quotes Slaughter saying he is “not on the side of the claimant solicitors or the insurance [sic].” Controversially, he says he is “on the side of the victim.” Surely this will never catch on. He went on to add that he would be interested to know what they do about whiplash over in Europe.
In the same report Insurance Times goes on to quote AXA Commercial director of claims and underwriting, David Walliams, who says “I feel like I’ve been spent a lifetime whinging about the compensation system [sic].” When asked about the proposed implementation of the Jackson reforms, he is reported to have observed that “Unless this gets derailed, this will be a really good step.”
Rails. Steps. Whatever can he mean?
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