The Civil Liability Bill has attracted widespread condemnation from several claimant groups and law firms.
Announced earlier today, the Civil Liability Bill will set fixed amounts of compensation for whiplash claims and ban the practice of seeking or offering to settle whiplash claims without medical evidence. It will also change the way the personal injury discount rate is set.
Association of Personal Injury Lawyers president Brett Dixon said: “Any concept of fairness or compassion or help for genuinely injured people has been sacrificed in what the government is now openly calling a ‘bill to cut car insurance premiums’.”
“All this is for a promise of reduced car insurance premiums, which we know will never stick in the long term. There has been a whole raft of reforms to personal injury over recent years, all with promises from the insurance industry that premiums will fall as a result. Well, guess what? Premiums have not fallen, and they will not fall this time either.
“Insurers have been happy to take compulsory car insurance premiums for years,” Dixon continued. “Under these measures, they will now be excused from paying full compensation to people who have been injured through no fault of their own.
“The fact that the government has been seduced by these empty promises shows a gullibility which is beyond belief.”
Qamar Anwar, managing director of First4Lawyers, was less scathing in his criticism of the Civil Liability Bill, but decried the government for “taking the insurance industry’s propaganda”.
“Coming at a time when insurers report having to shrink their claims departments in response to falling claims and reduced fraud, the justice secretary cannot have satisfied himself that reform is actually needed,” he said
“Reform should only be based on fact rather than the whim of the Association of British Insurers. Further, the promise that the bill will offer hope of lower insurance premiums to millions of motorists is a fallacy.”
‘Another sad day for British justice’
“There remains no clear evidence to the extent of whiplash fraud which would warrant introducing a system designed to make it impractical or uneconomic for any genuine claimant to make a claim,” argued Vidisha Joshi, managing partner of law firm Hodge Jones & Allen.
“The reforms will place significant impediments in the way of claimants seeking justice for smaller personal injury claims and would appear to be caught by the Supreme Court’s statement in last July’s Unison case that, without unimpeded access to justice, the democratic process is in danger of becoming ‘a meaningless charade.’ This is another sad day for British justice.”
Stephen Cavalier, chief executive of Thompsons Solicitors, also criticised the government for its apparent attack on access to justice.
Cavalier said: “This government does not want ordinary people to have access to lawyers or the right to bring a claim. They want injured people to be left alone and forced to take on insura