Efforts to save money through no-fault clinical negligence compensation would backfire on patients, a legal representative has claimed as calls mount for a reform of the current system. 

Mike Benner, chief executive of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, said any such scheme would ultimately cost the NHS more money and prevent trusts from learning what mistakes have been made.

Benner spoke in the build-up to the publication of the health and social select committee’s report on the case for reform of NHS litigation. Committee chair Jeremy Hunt has been an outspoken critic of the current costs of clinical negligence litigation and has advocated a no-fault system along the lines of ones in Sweden and New Zealand. The report is expected to be published soon after parliament returns from recess this month.

Writing on the APIL website, Benner said the committee’s inquiry was intended to find ways to make paying for harm to patients cheaper, but that a no-fault system was not the way to make this happen.

Mike Benner

Benner has spoken out on the eve of a major report into clin neg litigation costs

‘No-fault schemes in New Zealand and Sweden have been cited as models to which to aspire, said Benner. ‘But what may work there will not work here. The feasibility of a no-fault scheme has been explored and abandoned many times before, including most recently in Scotland.

‘There would inevitably be an increase in the number of claims if the need to prove negligence is removed and compensation payments would need to be much lower to make the system affordable. This means that patients injured as a result of negligence will not receive full compensation.’

Benner explained that in Sweden spending per head on benefits for injured and disabled people was double that of the UK, so any reduction in compensation there is offset by the standards of taxpayer-funded help people can receive. In comparison, he said, the UK social care and benefits system is ‘ill-equipped’ to look after injured people.

Benner said some commentators hail no-fault systems as a way to reduce stress for medical professionals and stop the defensive behaviour of defendants, but he warned the government not to reduce accountability and so prevent failures from being repeated.

He added that it would be unfair to create a two-tier system in which patients receive less than 100% compensation for medical injuries, while people injured in car crashes and at work are compensated fully.

Hunt has previously questioned whether lawyers’ self-interest is blocking necessary reforms and asked why claimant representatives will not support a less ‘confrontational’ relationship between doctors and patients through a no-fault system.

 

This article is now closed for comment.