Debate over the ‘compensation culture’ should eschew the insults and focus on common areas of agreement, says Gary Beazleigh
- A collaborative approach on common issues may achieve a more favourable outcome than focusing on what divides stakeholders.
Claimant lawyers have drawn their battle lines around access to justice while defendants plot their continued war against the compensation culture.
But what is ‘compensation culture’? To the man on the street it is a phrase that conjures images of excessive and unmeritorious personal injury claims captured by ambulance chasers. However, it could be argued that we should beware an equally unattractive counter-culture whereby we create a legal framework that creates firewalls preventing genuine claimants from recovering fair compensation against an alleged tortfeasor. A fair system of compensation should sit somewhere on this spectrum but should be based on a set of values, traditions, beliefs, interactions, behaviours and attitudes, and it is these factors that define what a modern compensation culture should look like.
It was in George Osborne’s infamous Autumn statement in 2015 that he announced the government’s intention to remove soft
