“Injured people will suffer twice” – furious reaction to clinical negligence fixed costs

Those harmed by the NHS will “have to pay again by losing access to justice” as a result of government plans to introduce fixed costs, campaigners have claimed.

The Department of Health & Social Care has published long-awaited proposals for fixed recoverable costs for fast-track cases, and significantly chose to set the fees at levels recommended by defendant representatives, rather than higher ones proposed by the claimant side.

Peter Walsh, chief executive of Action against Medical Accidents (AvMA), noted that the government consulted on similar proposals in 2017 and received a thumbs down from the majority of respondents.

He said: “It is shocking that the government is still pushing to bring in these illogical and potentially unfair proposals rather than looking at the root causes of high costs and addressing them…

“The government seems to have ignored the fact that the likely effect of these proposals would be that many people whose lives have been devastated by perfectly avoidable, negligent treatment will not be able to challenge denials or get access to justice.

“In effect, the very people that the NHS has harmed through lapses in patient safety will have to pay again by losing access to justice. If lawyers are unable to claim for time they spend overcoming denials of liability, injured people will not be able to get legal representation.”

Mr Walsh argued that the best way to save the NHS money was to improve patient safety to prevent these incidents in the first place, “and when mistakes do happen investigate them properly and make early, fair and appropriate offers of compensation without costly litigation”.

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Source: Legal Futures, 1 February 2022