Private Injury Claims Statistics: Is there a Compensation Claim Culture in the United Kingdom?

An critical ulterior objective is to give at least a preliminary evaluation of the contention that both the quantity and the cost of claims have been driven to record levels. If the figures bear this out, it would lend support to those who think about the UK to be gripped by a compensation culture, and undermine the Governments view that, though the compensation culture is a myth, the publics erroneous belief that it exists results in real and expensive burdens.

Compensation Recovery Unit statistics say that the number of claims has elevated only by three per cent in the last five years. The far more detailed figures reveal that not all types of injury have reflected in this tiny improve. In certain, it is notable that accident claimshave in fact declined, and it is the substantial rise in claims for illness that accounts for the all round improve.

The Insurers Bodily Injury Awards Studies. All through the period studied, legal costs, like both claimant and defendant expenses, averaged 30 per cent of the total motor individual injury claims. This signifies that legal fees continued to boost by far more than double the price of the rise of national typical earnings.

National Overall health Service statistics offer that there has undoubtedly been a extremely great improve in clinical negligence claims in the final 30 or so years. The Pearson Commission reported in 1978 that the quantity of claims of malpractice against doctors and dentists (like these in private practice) had been operating at about 500 a year. By 1990-1991, the estimated number of new medical claims made against the NHS in England had risen to in between 5419 and 6979 for the year. The Oxfordshire study reported a steady growth in new claims in the period 1974-1998. In answers to Parliamentary questions in 2005, the quantity of claims made from 1996-2004 was broken down, using data supplied by the NHSLA. These figures confirmed the continuation of the downward trend in claims numbers that has been evident in recent years. They now are close to the lowest estimate for the year 1990-1991, coming down from a peak in the period 1997-2002.

Expense of claims

A complete image of the NHSs annual expenditure on clinical negligence compensation in England is offered from 1996. This reveals a common upwards trend up to and such as the year 2004-2005. The figures are startlingly higher than these accessible for the start of the 1990s, when the annual cost of clinical negligence compensation was reported to have been GBP 53.two and GBP 51.3m in 1990-1991 and 1991-1992 respectively. Even these are extremely much larger than the estimated figure for 1974-75 of GBP 1m. In claims for clinical negligence that had been closed by the NHSLA in 2004-2005, defence and claimant expenses were equal to, respectively, 13.76 per cent and 19.81 per cent of damages.

Outstanding liabilities for clinical negligence

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1 of the most frequently misapplied statistics in the current compensation culture debate is the annual estimate of the NHSs outstanding liabilities for clinical negligence (including each identified and unknown but expected claims, and taking into account the likelihood of settlement). This has risen from GBP 3.2 billion in 1999 to GBP 5.9 billion in 2003 and GBP 7.8 billion in 2004. The figures refer to liabilities that the NHS claims will arise more than a longer period of time, and are really considerably higher than the sums that are truly paid out on an annual basis. Estimating the cost of outstanding liabilities is an workout that is fraught with issues and the resulting figure representing a worst case scenario has been heavily criticised. Though the estimate of outstanding liabilities is regularly cited in the press and media, it must be handled with care. It would be quite incorrect, for example, to use it to calculate the percentage of the annual NHS budget that is at the moment spent on clinical negligence compensation.

These figures provide the basis for an initial examination of the claim that a damaging compensation culture has developed in the UK in current years.