SAYING sorry should not mean a person in a position of power should be open to legal costs totalling millions of pounds.

That is the message behind a new bill which Henley MP John Howell introduced for its first reading in parliament this week.

The Conservative MP introduced a private members bill, a type of proposal for a new law, calling for the change.

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According to Mr Howell, the change to the law would mean someone who apologised would not 'create a legal liability' and could settle a dispute without someone being taken for 'every penny they have'.

The Apologies Bill, as it was named, was read out for the first time in the House of Commons on Tuesday.

Mr Howell said an apology could still be thought of as 'meaningful' and not 'tokenistic' even if it did not mean someone had technically admitted responsibility for a mistake in the eyes of the law.

The Oxfordshire MP said: “It should be the mark of both a mature democratic society, and, of its dispute resolution system, that an apology, whether made publicly or privately, can and should be allowed to be meaningful, and, helpful rather than simply a necessary yet tokenistic gesture.

"An apology can truly change atmospheres, and, the nature of conversations, and, outcomes. Used appropriately, it can help avoid a dispute going to Court. Equally, it can assist the resolution of a case by changing the approach being taken."

A statement from his office added that the bill would not take away people's right to pursue court action against someone who had wronged them.

But it added that in America, where similar laws already exist at a state level 43 per cent of cases where there were medical errors were resolved by apology alone.

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Mr Howell said the new law, if passed, could help to 'unlock' disputes where people or organisations had become afraid to apologise in case it opened them up for courtroom action, leading to more civility in arguments.

The MP said a similar law introduced in Scotland had been successful.

John Bates, a law academic at Northumbria Law School, pointed out on Twitter that a clause in the Compensation Act 2006 already says that an apology ‘shall not of itself amount to an admission of negligence or breach of statutory duty’.