The government and insurance companies will act as ‘Big Brother’ over law firms and claims management companies, by monitoring data flowing through the new road traffic accident claims web portal and weeding out those abusing the system, it was alleged last week.

This was denied by Kevin Westall, head of civil policy and customer intelligence at the Ministry of Justice, who told the Claims Standards Council (CSC) annual conference in Manchester that the MoJ will monitor the data for trends rather than target individual firms, but will ‘move very quickly’ to stop any firms abusing the system.

The new RTA claims process, for claims between £1,000 and £10,000, is now scheduled to go live on 30 April, not 6 April as had been expected.

The MoJ said the start date is being deferred ‘to allow users to make the necessary changes to their own internal case management systems’. The new process is being brought in at the behest of the MoJ to speed up claims and make the claims process cheaper. As part of the new process, the insurance industry has set up an electronic portal for the transfer of claims data, which the MoJ required be secure.

Westall said that stakeholders will shortly be consulted about what information may or may not be gleaned from the portal.

David Bott (pictured), managing partner at Cheshire specialist personal injury firm Bott & Co, said: ‘It’s a bit Big Brother. Everything going through the portal will be logged. The MoJ and the insurers will have a lot of data on us. It’s not clear as to what happens with regard to a transgressor, but you shouldn’t look at making short-term gains.’

Westall said: ‘We were pressed by stakeholders to monitor the process effectively. The MoJ is looking primarily at trends rather than targeting individual firms.' Westall added that individual firms will be questioned if the data show anomalies in their practices, while insurers will be questioned if trends in the data show a decline in damages payouts. ‘If we see that, we will move very quickly to stop it,’ he said.