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I fear Mr Hyde has gone along to the ABI conference and forgotten to apply any critical reasoning before putting pen to paper.

Insurers are trying to pretend they are unhappy, trying to pretend that they haven’t got a massive bonus, preparing for both their next battle and practicing their excuses not to pass on any of the massive savings they have made.

The bits you have overlooked:
1. On whiplash claims the average that they pay to victims will fall by about 80%
2. They will also avoid paying any legal costs at all
3. This makes up about 90% of their cases. The savings are enormous.
4. The number of claims paid out will fall as Claimants are pushed out of the system by not knowing where to start, liability denials, withdrawn indemnities and other tricks that fail now because of legal advice. It would be shocking if the numbers of claims paid were to drop by less than 25-30%

Against this background they will be exposed to some vexatious litigants. It is like gaining a pound and grieving a lost penny. Or more likely gaining a billion pounds and using the extra £500k spent in one area to justify taking another few million.

The sense already is that this is just the start of the next phase and with victims’ rights trimmed to the bone it’s scary to think where they may want to go next, with a government content to dance to whatever tune they are given.