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Maybe it's time to take a step back and reconsider the whole question of compensation for injuries.

Realistically, why should people be entitled to receive compensation at all for relatively minor injuries? They may be annoying and unpleasant, but so what? They don't have any long term effects and I would take the view that they should just be accepted as part of life.

It's also the case that damages take no account of the individual. I'm in the fortunate position of being well off, so that a couple of thousand quid for a minor injury wouldn't make the slightest difference to me, and I wouldn't even bother making a claim.

But to someone on benefits that amount is a fortune - and it has to be accepted that the incentive to commit fraud to obtain such a sum is also much higher.

If damages are genuinely supposed to be compensatory then logically they should be linked to one's wealth. So someone on benefits who had a whiplash injury might receive £250, whereas someone in my position should receive £25,000. After all, we've both suffered the same amount of pain, but in order to soothe my pain I theoretically need far more than a poor person to achieve the same level of `relief'.

And whether or not my view that damages for minor injuries should be completely abolished is accepted there is emphatically no justification for paying lawyers large amounts of money to handle such claims. As I said in an earlier post such claims should be handled by an independent panel, much the same as the CICA.