The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) consultation, Fixed recoverable costs in lower value clinical negligence claims, closed this week. It proposed a streamlined process for claims valued up to £25,000, with limits at each stage on the amount of legal costs that successful claimants can recover.
Responding, the Association of Costs Lawyers (ACL) said the proposed pre-action track should go ahead as this would achieve the objective of reducing costs, but the plans for fixed recoverable should be dropped.
ACL Council member Kris Kilsby said: ‘Fixed recoverable costs are a very blunt instrument that may work in areas where the course of claims is relatively predictable―such as road traffic accidents―but not in a much more complex area like clinical negligence.’
If the government did decide to go ahead, however, the ACL questioned the level of costs and noted the consultation failed to provide ‘any form of reasoning’. It urged a ‘full and proper costs analysis’ before the final fixed recoverable costs were decided.
Qamar Anwar, managing director of independent legal marketing collective First4Lawyers, urged the government to ditch the whole plan, warning ‘low value does not mean simple’.
Moreover, the proposals could backfire, with litigants in person trying to being unmeritorious claims, costing the NHS more in legal spend. He said the government’s plans to introduce mandatory neutral evaluation, with specialist barristers evaluating claims at the outset, could lead to longer delays for consumers.
Suzanne Trask, Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (Apil) executive committee member, said: ‘Subjecting vulnerable injured patients, who lack the capacity to bring their own claims, to this pared down process is unfair and inconsistent.’
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