The Ministry of Justice in January issued a call for evidence on whether a dual or multiple rather than a single discount rate should be used.
Chamberlayne, who is a partner at Stewarts and chair of the Forum of Complex Injury Solicitors, looks at the pros and cons of each—single, dual and multiple—and the instances of these at work in other jurisdictions. Ireland, for example, uses a dual rate but takes a slightly different approach to that of the courts in England and Wales.
While Chamberlayne does not advocate one course over another, he notes that a dual rate by heads of loss ‘is, for good reason, the solution arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence by the common law courts who were not hamstrung by legislation, eg Ireland, Guernsey and Bermuda’.
