The Prime Minister has dubbed the UK the ‘whiplash capital of Europe’ with an estimated 400,000 people lodging whiplash claims each year. The UK insurance industry believes these claims cost £2bn It seems clear that the significant majority of these claims are genuine. A small minority may well be false claims. At the start of this month, Justice Secretary Ken Clarke joined forces with the Transport Secretary Justine Greening to tackle dishonest drivers who make ‘spurious claims’.
The government’s masterplan to tackle what they believe to be a growing problem in England is to set up independent panels of medical experts with no direct links to the claimants. It is not yet clear how the panel will prove that whiplash has or has not been suffered. The symptoms of headaches, sore neck, sore back and pins and needles rely heavily on victims describing to their GP’s what they feel. How more doctors are going to assist this remains to be seen. Given that claims can be brought up to three years after the event has occurred, will make proving the injury that much more difficult.
Insurers have said that they will insert warnings into policies which explicitly say that they will investigate and challenge any claims for whiplash. Insurance companies will be encouraged to challenge claims which they think are suspicious. To add a bit of punch to this promise, the government plans to make amendments to the procedural framework in England. Mr Clarke summarises the apparent failures by saying: “It is scandalous we have a system where it is cheaper for insurers to settle a spurious whiplash claim out of court than defend it”.
With all this talk of ‘spurious claims’ and the plight of the honest driver, we may find it easy to forget the position of the honest claimant. It is important that the government’s proposals do to not drive away or deter those who actually have valid claims. Only time will tell whether or not the government’s plans in England are effective. If we do see any reduction in numbers hopefully it is because the framework has successfully managed to ‘weed’ out fraudulent claims (as the Justice Secretary predicts it will) and not because it has become difficult for an innocent victim to get the compensation they deserve.
Source: Brodies LLP
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