[2024] UKUT 84 (AAC)

I am satisfied that Ms Webb is correct and that the phrase “other resultant losses” in paragraph 42(b) “must mean other resultant losses resulting from the loss of parental services” and that it does not have the wider meaning contended for by Ms Skander.

Paragraph 42 must be read as a whole. Paragraph 42(b) cannot be read in isolation from the rest of the provision. The word “other” and the phrases “other payments” and “other resultant losses” must be construed in the context of the paragraph as a whole.

The phrase “other resultant losses” appears in a paragraph which specifically concerns the loss of parental services. That is apparent from both the stem of paragraph 42 and paragraph 42(a). Moreover, the payment for loss of parental services at paragraph 42(a) is a tariff award. To the extent that the tariff award might not adequately reflect payment for the loss of the parental services in a particular case, it makes sense that the Scheme should provide a discretion to the claims officer under paragraph 42(b) to make “other payments” to meet “other resultant losses”.

I agree with Ms Webb that the correct reading of paragraph 42(b) links “resultant” with “loss of parental services” rather than linking “resultant” with the broader issue of the death of the deceased.

The interpretation of paragraph 42(b) contended for by the Applicant, namely that it concerns payments “distinct from parental services as previously mentioned”, ignores the context of the sub-paragraph, which appears in the context of the stem of paragraph 42 and in the light of paragraph 42(a). It is also to read words into the Scheme which are not there.

The fact that a decision maker is directed in the coda to paragraph 42 to consider “any other factors and contingencies which appear to the claims officer to be relevant” when considering the appropriate multiplier to be applied to payments which fall under paragraph 42(b) is not relevant to the prior question of whether payments are within the ambit of paragraph 42(b) in the first place.

I therefore reject the bedrock of Ms Skander’s argument (as set out in paragraph 18 above) that I should find that “other payments” and “other resultant losses” meant “distinct from parental services as previously mentioned” and so additional to payments for parental services.

The word “other”, whether in the context of “other payments” or “other resultant losses”, cannot be construed without reference to the whole of paragraph 42, which includes the references to dependency on parental services in the body of the paragraph to loss of that parent’s services in paragraph 42(a). “Other” payments are payments other than the tariff payment, but they must be to meet other resultant losses arising or resulting from the loss of parental services.

In that event the Tribunal’s conclusion at [37] that the phrase “other resultant losses” in paragraph 42(b) must mean “other resultant losses resulting from the loss of parental services” is the correct conclusion for it to have reached.

I have reached this conclusion without recourse to the Guide to Applicants for Compensation in Fatal Cases TS4 (issue no. 1 4/01), which is just that – guidance and no more, but my conclusion accords with that guidance. What it states is that

“Loss of parental services

13.

A qualifying claimant under 18 years of age may be eligible, in addition to any sum for dependency, for compensation for loss of parental services at an annual rate of Level 5 of the Tariff – currently £2,000. Compensation may also be payable to meet other resultant losses, e.g. any additional costs of childcare or loss of earnings suffered by an adult in looking after the child. An appropriate multiplier, applied to the period until the child reaches the age of 18, will be used”.

(The same formulation is used in the later 2005 version.)

Ground one therefore falls to be dismissed.