Nicholas Bevan regrets that an opportunity has been missed & justice has not been done
Mr Justice Ouseley delivered his judgment in RoadPeace v Secretary of State for Transport [2017] EWHC 2725 (Admin) on 7 November 2017. This judicial review was brought when the minister ignored RoadPeace’s repeated requests to remove two unlawful exclusions of liability from the Uninsured Drivers Agreement 2015 and to bring the UK’s regulation of motor insurance policies and the compensatory schemes operated by the Motor Insurance Bureau (MIB) into line with the minimum standard set by the Motor Insurance Directive 2009/103/EC (the Directive). The minister had been fully briefed by several well-informed sources about the systemic defects in the UK’s implementation of the Directive, within his own February 2013 consultation on the MIB agreements.
By the time the case was heard, in February 2017, the defendant had been compelled to concede that the statutory regulation of motor insurers and the private law arrangements with the MIB for compensating victims of uninsured or untraced drivers do not conform with the Directive.
In December 2016, the defendant consulted on amending the
