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The first comment hits the nail on the head. The £25.6bn figure is a projection forward over many years. The more useful figure is around £1bn a year for medical negligence or probably less than 1% of NHS expenditure. Given the high risk nature of surgery and many forms of medical treatment, and the fact that surgical errors can have life-long and expensive consequences, it should be asked whether this is an unreasonably high figure. Has any comparison been carried out with the private medical sector here or the US or German medical systems? Are our doctors really much more negligent than their peers elsewhere? It simply is not enough to quote a misleading figure and conclude from that figure alone that the cost of medical negligence is unaffordable.

I would also add that some enterprising social scientist might like to try to estimate to what degree behaviour within the NHS is modified by the risk of legal action. If trusts knew that compensation was limited would they be inclined to take more risks in (eg) staffing levels?