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The points on access to justice and setting an appropriate scale based on damages (not only the amount but the type of damages) recovered are, of course, valid. Let us take a hypothetical example of two workers in, say, the same city bank and who might become victims of clinical negligence. One of them is, for example, an investment banker who may be earning in excess of, say, £1,000,000.00 PA (with or without bonuses), whereas the other might be a kitchen porter in the canteen on £12,000.00 PA. Bearing in mind that lawyers will be induced to take on only the more lucrative higher value loss of earnings claims, the kitchen worker in the example will stand a greater chance of being denied access to justice purely on the basis of her social station and her low income. If you're rich by virtue of being a high earner you get costs and have the right to assessment of the same, whereas if you're poor you don't. Surely this would be grounds for a successful challenge to any clinical negligence costs cap (based on global damages alone) under the Human Rights Act insofar as it amounts to a denial to the lower paid worker of the right to a fair trial. The current cap at £100K is, in my view, already an infringement of the HRA in this regard. The clin. neg. costs cap should be based solely on PSLA with LOE being excluded from the equation.