Fixed costs will impact access to justice & lead to long term deterioration of healthcare in the UK, says Nina Ali
The government propose to limit legal costs for claims below £250,000 and ensure that lawyer’s fees reflect a percentage of the compensation received by a patient so that it is proportionate.
In doing so they have already decided that “unscrupulous” clinical negligence lawyers are to blame and fired the first shot with a sensationalist and gross misrepresentation of the realities of clinical negligence cases.
Lawyer bashing
A recent press release cites an example of a lawyer “pocketing” £175,000 whilst the patient received “just” £11,800. Unsurprisingly, no other information was provided; highly relevant factors such as the medical complexity of the case, how much work was necessary to establish liability, whether independent expert evidence was needed and critically, how vigorously the case was defended or dragged out by the defendant or the NHS litigation authority (NHSLA) was not mentioned.
This led to a predictable flurry of blatantly inaccurate lawyer bashing stories, which led me to write to the health minister Ben Gummer inviting him
