PM urged to put brake on ‘ambulance chasers’

Jonathan Oliver writes as political editor of the Sunday Times 25^th July.

David Cameron is being urged to slash of the fees handed to ambulance-chasing Lawyers as part of a crackdown on the compensation culture.

Personal injury lawyers have been able to claim vast costs, sometimes twice as much as their clients’ damages, and a no-win no-fee laws introduced by Labour.

They are targeted in a report for the Prime Minister by Lord Young, the former Tory employment Sec. It will be published in September, but it is understood that Cameron has been shown the main findings and is enthusiastic about them

Young was remit was to examine the effects of excessive health and safety regulations and their abuse in compensation claims. His report recommends:

• Banning advertising by personal injury lawyers and middlemen who handle claims

• Regulating health and safety consultants robustly

• Cutting red tape that deters police officers, community support officers and paramedics from taking physical risks to help members of the public.

The most radical proposal is the scrapping of conditional fee arrangements in compensation claim cases. Currently there are few limits on the level of costs that claimants’ lawyers can charge if they win a case.

“Whoever loses has to pay the legal costs, the referring agent costs, the premium for the legal costs, the insurance premium plus the insurance costs for counsel and then finally the claim itself,� Young told the Sunday Times.

He recommends that legal costs in no-win, no-fee cases be capped at a small percentage of any damages awarded. “In the normal run, legal costs should not be more than 25% to 30% of the claim. Currently there are 100% to 200%,� he said.

Businesses and public bodies such as hospitals are typical targets of compensation claims. But it emerged last week that a man who was frogmarched to a police station with a “Thiefâ€� sign around his neck is suing the man he defrauded the £90,000. A Britain’s got talent contestant and is suing Simon Cowell for £2.5 million claiming she was “Humiliated and degraded” on the show.

Young said the excesses were the result of many of the decisions taken by the Labour government: “The litigious nature of our society has developed in the past 10 years, solely out of the Blair-Brown years. They allowed conditional fee arrangements. They allowed the claims management companies.

“My job is about bringing common sense back to health and safety. This is not going to be a review which comes out, is written about and then get pigeonholed. My commitment is to see everything through.”

Young said he had received hundreds of letters and e-mails from members of the public with “health and safety gone madâ€� stories: “You get the case of the restaurants that bans toothpicks on health and safety grounds.”

He said advertisements for companies handling injury claims should take a large part of the blame by encouraging “fraudulent and nonsense� litigation and creating a climate of fear.

Swathes of health and safety regulations covering ordinary offices are expected to be scrapped, while safeguarding potentially dangerous work places such as factories and warehouses will remain.

A number 10 spokesman said: “The Prime Minister attaches real importance to Lord Young’s work on health and safety. We look forward to receiving the final report and will respond in due course.”

Dictated by Martin Wyatt from original article in Sunday Times.

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