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Anon @ 21.41 17.11.16

Yes you can, although I think that counts as several.

The answer to almost all of your questions is that there is money to be had, and a small minority are willing to bend the truth or even break the law in order to take advantage of that. I abhor (as you clearly do) all parties to that kind of behaviour, from Claimants who lay it on thick or worse, to exorbitant credit hire charges, crash for cash, phantom occupants, being called and texted about accidents I might have had, and all of the other things that people do to abuse the personal injury claims process and system. And let's not forget that insurers were just as guilty for charging referral fees to their panel solicitors, and the practice of insurers inflating the repair costs charged to each other. I agree categorically that all of that ought to be tackled in the strongest possible way, and I don't think anyone other than the minority who abuse the system would disagree. However, to suggest that 90% of parties involved are acting fraudulently is OTT (and unsubstantiated), and this idea of removing long held legal rights from the majority just to tackle the minority is simply overkill - all those negative aspects could be tackled in ways that don't affect innocent victims.

It also remains the case that insurers do themselves no favours . I've dealt with costs in numerous cases where, with no basis for making the accusation or evidence to back it up, insurers have alleged phantom occupancy and so on, only to give up so late that increased costs are unavoidable. Not making sensible offers and letting matters run to disposal resulting in 100% success fees, trying to knock £20 off the cost of a medical report fee (in a fixed costs matter) and running that argument to detailed assessment at a cost running into the thousands - the list goes on. Behaviour like that (possibly encouraged by panel solicitors or costs "experts" who have an interest in the satellite litigation that arises) has no doubt contributed as much to costs over the years as allegedly fraudulent claims (the statistics relating to which are as we know heavily weighted to suit the position of the ABI and their members).

And for years they've been blaming costs (which they have helped incur) on rising insurance premiums, and then when costs have been cut they've blamed fraud, and then when the number of claims has fallen they've blamed costs and fraud and cars getting more complicated and IPT, and despite reporting record profits premiums have continued to rise. See yesterday's Anonymous comment at 15.07pm; or Richard Walton's link to the Guardian article. It remains a fact that nobody except the insurance companies and their shareholders will benefit. My insurance won't go down, accidents will still happen, claims will still be made and some of those will still be fraudulent.

Response over.