Parliament To Debate Dropping Personal Injury Claim Stats
The government is preparing to debate falling numbers of personal injury claims in parliament, as some forms of claim have plunged to their lowest levels in a decade.
The Law Gazette reported that data from the Department for Work and Pensions’ Compensation Recovery Unit (CRU) found that the number of cases registered with it dropped by 13 per cent to 853,615 in the year 2017-2018.
While clinical negligence cases fell by three per cent to 17,400 in this time period, motor claims dropped by 17 per cent to some 650,000.
These figures fly in the face of the government’s argument to make sweeping changes affecting personal injury claims and clinical negligence claims, which have been reviewed after cries to take action to do something about Britain’s so-called ‘compensation culture’.
The CRU is considered an important benchmark for measuring claims numbers and long-term figures from the unit show that government intervention often leads to peaks and troughs in registered cases.
A new Civil Liability Bill introduced last month by David Gauke is being read in the House of Lords to introduce fixed tariffs for road traffic accident claims, and ban settlements being made without a medical examination. The government also intends to increase the small claims limit to £5,000.
Recently, the President of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) launched an attack on the £35 ‘saving’ the government and insurers put forward as a key benefit of passing the Civil Liability Bill.
Claims Magazine reported that Brett Dixon said at the APIL annual conference in Birmingham this month that the saving was the wrong focus and that injured people must remain at the heart of the matter.
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