Conference: only deal with regulated claims management companies, urges Tory

Claimant personal injury solicitors should only deal with claims management companies that are regulated by an organisation such as the Claims Standards Council (CSC), the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on insurance and financial services told solicitors last week.


Speaking at the Forum of Insurance Lawyers (FOIL) annual conference in London, John Greenway, Conservative MP for Ryedale, called on ministers to clamp down on the current 'feeding frenzy' generated by claims farmers.


'I would like to see the Law Society issue an edict that solicitors must only deal with people offering claims services which are supervised by the CSC and, in turn, regulated by the new statutory body,' he said. The Law Society declined to comment on the suggestion.


Meanwhile, claims farmers also came under fire at a separate debate on the Compensation Bill, which was hosted this week at the House of Lords by the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL).


The debate, chaired by Gazette editor Jonathan Ames, saw APIL president Allan Gore QC back the criticism of claims companies. 'When you have toothache, you do not go through a middleman dental company,' he argued. He said the aim should be to promote responsible behaviour and 'improve awareness of risk through education', showing that taking care could be 'an enabler of activity and not an inhibitor'.


But Julian Brazier, Conservative MP for Canterbury, argued that it might already be too late to remedy the 'compensation culture' problem as it had filtered down into a second generation of people like teachers, who would now hardly know how to set up a school trip. 'People have become inexperienced in taking risks,' he said.


See Comment