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The CEO of the MIB / former claims Director from Aviva is responsible for reform implementation.....Seriously, who decided that it would be a good idea to put the mice in charge of cheese distribution ?

Of course he’s going to say it’s all going swimmingly. However, the reforms clearly will infringe the right to access to justice. This is an ancient right but we’re all going to sit back and watch it get flushed down the toilet by the Defendant lobby....

For a start, the new system of LiP –v- Insurer doesn’t sit squarely with CPR Part 1 (2)(a) (the “equal footing” principle) and so the Government are going to have to ask the MIB to fix that too.

Here’s both sides of the argument :

Defendant Insurer : “These reforms are fair and will remove “interested parties” from the process”.
Translation : These reforms will enable us to get away with settling for lower sums than would have been the case if solicitors were involved. It also significantly reduces costs of the process and means that we can shed some jobs ourselves. All in all, these savings = huge profits and the £35 the Government holds us to account for will be small change in comparison to what we will gain.

The Claimant lobby’s opposition to the changes are twofold :

(1) access to justice and
(2) loss of jobs/revenue/businesses.

Therefore it isn’t solely about access to justice. However, there is nothing wrong with wanting to preserve jobs, income and ability to pay your way in the world. That is a perfectly legitimate position. Obviously the Defendant lobby say “tough – you’ve all had it too good for too long” and whilst that might seek to address the job preservation contention, it doesn’t go any way towards answering the access to justice point. Why ? Because they can’t answer that point. They know that access to justice will be diminished or at the very least significantly diluted by the proposed reforms.